Shakespeare Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Outcome

Shakespeare Primary School continues to be a good school.

What is it like to attend this school?

Shakespeare Primary School is a welcoming school where pupils flourish. The school has high expectations and works hard to provide the best education for all pupils.

Many pupils join the school for a short period of time. A significant proportion of these pupils are unable to speak English on their arrival. On entry, pupils quickly build important knowledge and skills from their varied starting points.

Highly skilled staff ensure that the needs of pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are met well. Typical comments from parents and carers include: 'Th...e school is a positive and supportive environment for our children.'

Pupils build strong relationships during their time in school.

Staff help children to play harmoniously at breaktimes. Behaviour is calm and purposeful. Pupils trust adults to deal with any problems they may have.

This helps pupils to feel safe.

Pupils' wider development is exceptional. The school's 'Shakespeare 60' offer ensures that pupils benefit from a wide range of educational visits, as well as visitors into school, to increase their cultural experience.

Pupils enjoy the range of activities on offer, such as table tennis, football and chess. Older pupils enjoy organising charity events in the community such as collecting food at harvest time for a local food bank.

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

Many pupils join the school mid-way through the year.

These pupils do not complete a full key stage with the school. A high proportion of these pupils are either new to the country or have not previously attended school regularly. This impacts on the school's published outcomes.

Leaders are determined for these pupils to achieve well. For older pupils who join the school unable to speak English, staff ensure that assessment is used to identify starting points for learning. These pupils benefit from the 'accelerated English group', where pupils are supported to quickly acquire essential language skills to enable them to access the full curriculum.

Over the last two years, leaders have improved the curriculum so that the essential knowledge that pupils must learn from early years to Year 6 is clearly defined. Each subject curriculum includes the important vocabulary that pupils must acquire to help them read and write with confidence.

In Nursery, children learn about numbers.

Two- and three-year-olds enjoy stacking objects and singing number rhymes and songs to help them remember numbers up to five. Later in school, teachers follow a lesson structure that helps pupils remember important knowledge and vocabulary across all subjects. For example, in mathematics, pupils complete 'First 5' at the start of each lesson.

This supports pupils remembering important number facts such as multiplication tables. It helps pupils to solve mathematical problems.

Pupils achieve well in physical education (PE).

In Nursery, children learn to develop their movement and balance by riding bikes. Teachers use assessment effectively to ensure that knowledge and skills build over time. This year, leaders have begun to evaluate the impact of the revised PE curriculum to help them make further improvements.

A new programme for teaching phonics was implemented in September 2023. The programme is taught consistenlty well by staff. Staff use purposeful assessment to identify pupils who need extra support.

These pupils access catch-up sessions. All pupils practise reading books that match the letters and sounds they know. This helps pupils to learn to read fluently.

Pupils enjoy story time. Teachers read quality texts such as 'Boy in the Tower' by Polly Ho-Yen. The school introduced a 'Read More' initiative this year.

Pupils enjoy choosing books from the well-stocked library. Links with authors such as Stuart Lawrence and Onjali Q Rauf help develop pupils' love of reading.

Pupils with SEND achieve well.

Learning is carefully adapted to meet different starting points. Most pupils learn alongside their peers in class. Pupils' individual support plans are precise and contain the small steps needed to inform staff how they can best support pupils to meet the ambitious targets.

The school also has its own provision for some pupils with SEND: 'Shine', 'Thrive', 'Explore' and 'Engage'. Pupils who access these provisions benefit from teaching that is specifically adapted to meet their needs. For example, highly skilled staff help pupils to manage their emotions and improve their communication skills.

The school works tirelessly to improve pupils' attendance. The systems for checking attendance and punctuality identify pupils who need extra help to get to school and to arrive on time. Effective support ensures that attendance is high for most pupils.

The school's wider development offer contributes significantly to pupils' character development. For example, in Nursery, children learn about the life cycle of butterflies in their 'Wiggle, Hatch, Crawl' caterpillar experience. The school's 'Golden Themes' make meaningful links between pupils' personal development and subject curriculums.

Older pupils understand the importance of sustainability by exploring the impact of overfishing in the North Sea. In computing, pupils learn how to keep safe while using the internet. The school's carefully chosen books, such as 'Pig-Heart Boy' by Malorie Blackman, inspire pupils to raise money for charity.

Leaders' shared determination to continuously improve the quality of education in the school is evident in the impact of the recent changes to the curriculum. Although these changes are being implemented well, more needs to be done to ensure that pupils achieve consistently highly. Staff feel that their views are well considered.

They are proud to work at the school.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• In some subjects, refinements to the school's curriculum are still being embedded.

In these subjects, leaders' ambition for pupils to achieve highly is not realised. The school should continue to check that teaching supports all pupils to consistently reach high standards that prepare pupils for future learning.

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 January 2015.