St Alban’s Catholic Primary School, A Voluntary Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is an outstanding school. The headteacher, senior leaders and governors are relentless in their desire to continually improve.

Together they have worked tirelessly to address and eliminate all areas for improvement identified from the previous inspection. The headteacher's excellent leadership has galvanised the support of teachers, parents, pupils and colleagues within local schools and has helped the school to make the leap from requiring improvement to outstanding. Governors know the school exceptionally well.

Their good skills, considerable knowledge and direct involvement in the life of the school have been essential in supporting the school's contin...uous improvement. Pupils' behaviour is exemplary at all times. They are reflective, eminently sensible and work exceptionally well together.

Pupils' highly positive attitudes to learning help to ensure that they progress well and attain highly. The school's work with parents is remarkable. Large numbers of parents engage with the school to help improve pupils' reading, and support in their children's development in the early years.

They are of the opinion that their children are happy and safe at school. The quality of teaching, including in phonics (linking letters to the sounds they make), is outstanding. Teachers and teaching assistants work exceptionally well together and have very high expectations of pupils.

There is excellent practice in marking to support pupils' understanding of how to improve their work, but this is not entirely consistent across the school. Teachers are very well trained. They strive to make learning interesting and engaging and continually challenge pupils to investigate and explore learning and to achieve to their very best.

The dedicated mentoring support offered to newly qualified teachers is of exceptionally high quality and has helped to ensure that teachers new to the school quickly improve their practice and take their place in a highly effective team. Pupils' attainment in reading, writing and mathematics at the end of Key Stage 1 in 2014 was outstanding, as it has been for several years. Their attainment at the end of Key Stage 2 in these subjects was also outstanding, as it was in grammar, punctuation and spelling.

All groups of pupils make at least good, and often outstanding progress across all year groups and in all subjects. All aspects of the early years, including leadership, teaching, provision, achievement and work with parents, are outstanding.

Information about this school

This school is larger than an average-sized primary school.

The proportion of pupils supported through school action is below average. The proportion of pupils supported at school action plus or with a statement of special educational needs is below average. The proportion of disadvantaged pupils for whom the school receives pupil premium funding is below the national average.

(The pupil premium is additional funding for those pupils who are known to be eligible for free school meals and those who are looked after by the local authority.) The proportion of pupils from minority ethnic groups is just below average. An average proportion of pupils speak English as an additional language.

All early years provision is full time. The school meets the government's current floor standards, which are the minimum expectations for pupils' attainment and progress in English and mathematics. Since the previous inspection the senior leadership team has been reorganised and a new Chair of Governors has been appointed.

Several teachers have joined the school, including three newly qualified teachers. A before- and after-school service and a pre-school service operate from the site. Both are subject to separate inspections.

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