Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School, Chorley

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Outcome

Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School continues to be a good school.

What is it like to attend this school?

Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School is a warm, supportive and aspirational community.

Leaders and staff have high ambitions for the achievement, behaviour and personal development of pupils, including children in the early years.

Pupils enjoy learning and developing. They are excited to learn new things.

Across the school, they achieve well.

Pupils and staff have excellent relationships. Staff are strong, positive role models for pupils.

They help pupils to learn how to understand their feelings and emotions. Pupils feel happy and safe and ...well looked after by staff.

Pupils are taught how to treat each other well.

Typically, they are kind and friendly to each other. Where necessary, staff deal with bullying well. They skilfully help pupils to think about and change their behaviour.

Pupils enjoy an extensive and varied range of clubs and opportunities. Through these, they learn beyond the curriculum, keep fit and join in well with others.

Pupils are proud to belong to their caring community.

They learn how to make a positive contribution. They enjoy roles such as being representatives in the school council and anti-bullying ambassadors. They value supporting good causes and charities within and beyond their school community.

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

Governors, leaders and staff are successfully realising their vision for the quality of education and opportunities for personal development that are provided for pupils. They work cohesively to accurately evaluate and strengthen their practice. Pupils develop and achieve well.

Leaders ensure that children in the early years and pupils in Years 1 to 6 follow a broad and balanced curriculum. All pupils, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), benefit from curriculum content that is suitably ambitious. For the most part, pupils of all ages make strong gains in what they know and remember across the breadth of subjects they study.

In most subject areas, leaders ensure that the component knowledge that pupils in Years 1 to 6 will learn is clear. This helps teachers carefully select the activities for lessons. However, in some parts of the early years curriculum, leaders have not identified the specific knowledge that children should learn as clearly as they have elsewhere.

Therefore, in these areas of learning, children do not always benefit from experiences and activities that are as closely matched to the next stage of their education as they could be.

Staff's subject knowledge is secure. In the main, they present subject matter clearly and select appropriately demanding activities.

These help pupils and children to recall and practise using an increasingly broad body of knowledge.

Staff carefully consider how to organise spaces and resources. They help all pupils and children to engage well with their learning.

Consequently, pupils typically demonstrate positive attitudes to their learning, and low-level disruption is rare.

Staff design and use effective assessment strategies. As a result, they precisely identify the knowledge that pupils and children know and remember.

Staff provide good support for pupils who have gaps in their knowledge.

Leaders prioritise reading throughout the school. They ensure that staff are well equipped to confidently deliver an ambitious reading curriculum.

Staff make effective use of resources and books that are well matched to the sounds that pupils and children are learning. They carefully identify what phonics knowledge pupils know and remember. They ensure that pupils get effective support if they have gaps in their knowledge.

Consequently, pupils throughout the school are increasingly confident readers.

Staff promote and encourage reading to pupils of all ages. Pupils enjoy and value reading.

Many pupils have developed a love of reading.

Leaders diligently consider a wide range of information in order to accurately identify the additional needs of pupils and children. They carefully consider the impact of pupils' needs on their academic, personal and social development.

Leaders expertly design programmes of support that are explicitly matched to these needs. In doing so, they deftly draw on the expertise of other specialist partners to complement the support that pupils with SEND receive.

Leaders demonstrate a strong commitment to working closely with parents and families.

Parents appreciate what staff do to keep them informed about their children's education and experiences. They value the additional support that leaders provide for parents who need it.

Pupils and children benefit from a comprehensive personal development programme that is centred on their needs.

Staff confidently deliver well-chosen content. This ensures that pupils have an age-appropriate understanding of safety, health and relationships. Furthermore, pupils quickly understand and demonstrate the personal and social values that they need to make a positive contribution to their community.

Leaders have established a deep culture of support for staff. Staff could not speak more highly of the professional and personal support that leaders provide. Staff feel well equipped to undertake their roles.

They value the many ways in which leaders help them to overcome the workload and well-being challenges they sometimes face.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Pupils and children are taught well about safety.

This helps pupils to have a good understanding of what they can do to keep themselves safe.

Leaders ensure that staff are well trained to spot concerns about pupils' safety. They regularly remind staff about what they should do if they have any worries about pupils' well-being.

Staff identify and pass on concerns well.

Leaders carefully follow up any worries about pupils. They craft individual plans to respond to the needs of pupils and their families.

They make effective use of the support available in school and additional support from external experts.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• The subject-specific knowledge that children should learn is not clear in some parts of the early years curriculum. This means that in some subjects, the curriculum content in the early years and key stage 1 is not as closely aligned as it should be.

Consequently, children are not always as well prepared for key stage 1 as they could be in some subject areas. Leaders should ensure that the knowledge that children need to know to be well prepared for the learning in key stage 1 is clear in all parts of the curriculum in the early years.

Background

When we have judged a school to be good, we will then normally go into the school about once every four years to confirm that the school remains good.

This is called an ungraded inspection, and it is carried out under section 8 of the Education Act 2005. We do not give graded judgements on an ungraded inspection. However, if we find evidence that a school would now receive a higher or lower grade, then the next inspection will be a graded inspection, which is carried out under section 5 of the Act.

Usually this is within one to two years of the date of the ungraded inspection. If we have serious concerns about safeguarding, behaviour or the quality of education, we will deem the ungraded inspection a graded inspection immediately.

This is the second ungraded inspection since we judged the school to be good in November 2013.