Race Leys Infant School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Leaders and staff care about every pupil who attends Race Leys Infant School. There is a strong commitment to supporting pupils' emotional needs, and relationships between staff and pupils are positive. The importance leaders and staff place on nurture and creating a safe place is clear to see.

Pupils know that staff care about them. As a result, the majority feel happy and safe in school.

The school has been through a period of leadership turbulence.

Leaders are working with determination to improve the quality of education. However, there is a lack of focus on key improvement priorities. Some pupils are not able to access the whole curriculum and therefore ...do not achieve as well as they should.

In addition to this, there are still some issues with behaviour management, which means that learning can be disrupted.

Leaders provide many opportunities for pupils to develop their skills and talents. A wide variety of clubs are offered, including coding, art, multi-skills, relaxation, and imagination.

Many pupils take advantage of these. Pupils get the opportunity to develop early leadership skills by being a member of the school council or the 'friendship crew'.

What does the school do well and what does it need to do better?

Leaders prioritise early reading.

Staff teach phonics well, and most pupils can read with fluency. Pupils practise reading with books that are closely matched to the sounds they have learned. However, they do not always do this regularly enough.

As a result, some pupils are not reading with fluency as quickly as they might. Teachers identify weaker readers. They provide extra help for these pupils.

Leaders and staff also prioritise promoting a love of reading. Pupils enjoy talking about their favourite books and authors. Visiting authors bring this to life.

Pupils also enjoy using the newly refurbished library, and they enjoy having stories read to them.

Children in the early years get off to a good start. They benefit from an ambitious, well-sequenced curriculum.

Children show good levels of motivation and interest in their learning. The calm environment allows adults to deepen children's understanding through positive interactions. Staff have a good understanding of how to adapt learning opportunities so that all children can demonstrate what they know and understand.

They have high expectations in how children should behave. They respond well to this and demonstrate the behaviour that is expected.

In contrast to this, behaviour in the rest of the school is not as positive.

Leaders and staff do not have high enough expectations of how pupils can and should behave. Disruptions during lessons happen too often. At playtime and lunchtime, pupils are not always reminded to play safely.

Some pupils are not expected to enter the school building in a calm and orderly way, and this affects how well they are ready to learn.Leaders have worked to design a curriculum that is well sequenced and coherent. However, for some pupils, the curriculum's high ambition is not realised.

The way in which the curriculum is implemented does not meet the needs of all pupils. Too often, all pupils are expected to do the same work. This leads to some pupils switching off from their learning or relying too heavily on adult support.

Some pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are most negatively affected by teachers providing work which is not precisely matched to their needs. Leaders do identify pupils with SEND. However, they have not ensured that staff fully understand how to adapt work for them.

When learning does not meet pupils' particular needs, this can lead to some disruptive behaviour.

Leaders work tirelessly to improve attendance. However, there is still a significant number of pupils who are persistently absent.

Often, these pupils have additional needs, which makes them vulnerable. This means these pupils miss important aspects of their education.

Staff are proud members of the school community and appreciate the efforts leaders take to support their well-being and workload.

Governors provide good support for leaders, but they need to ensure that priorities that will be bring about the greatest improvements are clear and precise.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Leaders understand the importance of keeping pupils safe.

Checks on staff assure leaders that all adults who work in school are safe to do so. Except for a couple of areas where procedures could be even tighter, the systems in place are rigorous. Training ensures that staff know what to do if they have a concern about a pupil or a member of staff.

Record-keeping shows that they follow these procedures. The pastoral team has extensive knowledge and knows pupils' families extremely well. This makes the team well placed to support pupils and families effectively and enables it to deal with the most complex of cases.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• Teachers do not consistently adapt curriculum plans to meet pupils' needs, including those with SEND. This means that some pupils rely too heavily on adult support, or they do not understand their learning. Leaders need to provide further development so that teachers can refine the curriculum in a way that makes sure that all pupils are achieving well, including those with SEND.

• Leaders do not monitor the delivery of the curriculum to ensure it is meeting the needs of all pupils, including those with SEND, well enough. They do not check there are suitable adaptations in place that will enable all pupils to be successful with their learning. Leaders must ensure that subject leaders, and the leaders for pupils with SEND, have time to review the implementation of the curriculum and provide staff with the necessary support for their teaching.

• Some adults do not address disruptive behaviour in lessons well enough. This leads to some pupils remaining off task and not completing their work, or others finding it hard to concentrate as well as they might. Leaders should ensure that there is a clear and concise behaviour policy that is consistently applied to allow pupils to be engaged with their learning and to behave appropriately during less structured times.

• Leaders identify many areas for improvement but do not always prioritise what should first be addressed and how. This slows school improvement. Governors and leaders should sharply focus their plans and clearly identify the actions they will take that will make the biggest difference to the quality of education for every pupil.

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