St Andrew’s Church of England Primary School, Chinnor

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils enjoy being part of this friendly and welcoming school. The school ensures that pupils behave with respect and tolerance. Relationships between pupils and staff are positive and mutually respectful.

The school has developed a wide range of opportunities to develop pupils' talents and interests beyond the taught curriculum.

The school is a calm and purposeful learning environment, with high expectations of pupil achievement. Recently, achievement has fallen below these high expectations in some subjects.

The school has taken swift and effective action to address this. As a result, pupils are achieving better in school now than some published results ind...icate.

The school has high expectations of behaviour and makes sure that these expectations are understood clearly by staff and pupils.

In the rare instances that behaviour does not meet these high expectations, adults work with pupils to make sure they understand how they should behave. For example, occasionally, there is some unkind behaviour during lunchtimes, which staff address swiftly with pupils.

Pupils know that they can speak to any adult in the school about their worries.

Pupils know that adults will take these worries seriously and they trust adults to help them. As a result, pupils are happy and safe here.

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

The school has high ambition for all pupils, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and other disadvantaged pupils.

The school has designed a curriculum to match this ambition, which identifies what it wants pupils to learn from early years onwards. Staff have strong subject knowledge, and the school provides training to ensure this is the case.

The school has a reading curriculum which helps pupils to become capable readers.

Those at the early stages of reading are supported well by adults. Adults make sure that pupils from early years onwards have the knowledge they need to become fluent readers and they provide extra support where needed. Staff check carefully that pupils understand what they are reading.

As a result, pupils, including those at the early stages of reading, read increasingly well.

Recent improvements to how the school checks pupils' understanding in phonics and mathematics are having an impact on all pupils' achievement, including those with SEND. In these subjects, the school now checks carefully what pupils understand and identifies where they have misconceptions.

Following these checks, teachers design lessons so that pupils attain as well as they can. Published outcomes for 2023 do not reflect the progress that current pupils now make through the curriculum.

In some subjects, teachers check pupils' understanding with the same careful approach that the school uses with phonics and mathematics.

However, in some other subjects, careful checking is not as well established. This means that pupils do not attain as well as they could in all subjects. Teachers know how to identify pupils who may need additional support to access their curriculum.

They design lessons to make sure that all pupils can access their curriculum fully. As a result, pupils, including those with SEND, attain well.

Pupils behave well in lessons and around the school, including at play and lunchtimes.

They engage actively with their lessons and enjoy the many opportunities to learn together. The school has high expectations of attendance and works well with parents and carers to make sure that pupils attend school regularly. As a result, attendance at the school is high.

Pupils and parents value the wealth of opportunities that the school provides to nurture pupils' talents and interests. These opportunities include many activities that enhance the curriculum, such as trips and visits. The school makes sure that all pupils, including those with SEND and other disadvantaged pupils, benefit fully from these opportunities.

Pupils know the school values of protection, trust, love and perseverance. They are able to talk about the fundamental British values, for example by being respectful to others, following rules and valuing difference.

The school prioritises opportunities for character development through many pupil leadership activities such as the school council and school ambassadors.

The strong pastoral team provides additional encouragement to pupils where needed, so that all pupils are represented in and benefit from these roles in their school. Pupils speak highly of the range of clubs and opportunities available, and they recall with excitement their learning on school trips such as geography field trips and visits to a local farm.

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, pupils' learning is not checked as carefully as it is in other subjects. This means that staff do not always know precisely what pupils need to do to improve to learn more and remember more over time. The school should ensure that staff assess pupils' learning carefully in all subjects and use these checks to inform their teaching.

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