St Cuthbert’s R.C. Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

St. Cuthbert's Roman Catholic Primary School provides an inclusive, caring and welcoming environment for pupils.

All members of staff work closely together to celebrate the rich diversity of languages and cultures within the school community. As a result, all pupils feel valued, have high levels of well-being and develop their confidence well in a nurturing atmosphere. The school has highly effective practices for the integration of newly arrived pupils with no English into the school, which has had a positive impact on their well-being.

The school provides high levels of care, support and guidance for pupils. The school has clearly established rules, routines and high expectations of behaviour. These help pupils to consid...er and to manage their own behaviour well.

Provision for promoting pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is strong. The emphasis on positive values and tolerance towards and respect for others is a notable feature across the school. The school makes very good use of the pupils' diverse cultural heritage to ensure that they have a good understanding of the need to respect one another.

Overall, the quality of teaching is good. As a result, many pupils develop knowledge, understanding and skills appropriate for their age and ability. However, provision is varied and teachers do not always provide sufficiently challenging learning activities that build on pupils' skills systematically over time.

School leaders promote a culture of support, trust and care that creates a positive learning environment for pupils and staff. However, the school's self-evaluation and improvement processes are not focused sharply enough on evaluating the quality of teaching and its impact on pupil progress. Senior leaders and governors are in the very early stages of working collaboratively to ensure that self-evaluation processes are thorough.

Recommendations R1 Ensure that self-evaluation and improvement planning focus suitably on strengthening pupil outcomes R2 Ensure that teachers use pupil progress information effectively to plan for sustained improvement for all pupils R3 Increase the effectiveness of the governing body in supporting the school and holding it to account