St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, A Voluntary Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is a good school Senior leaders lead the school with vision and a clear moral purpose. They have established an enthusiastic and increasingly able staff. The governing body knows the school well.

It holds leaders rigorously to account. Safeguarding is effective. Staff receive appropriate, up-to-date training.

This ensures that they have the skills to keep pupils safe. Pupils know how to keep themselves safe. They learn how to manage potential risks to their safety and well-being.

Children in early years make good progress because of good teaching. They develop positive attitudes to learning. Middle leaders are strong.

Working with senior... leaders and, increasingly, governors, they are working effectively to drive up standards. Most parents speak very positively about the school. They say they are very pleased with the care and attention their children receive.

Overall attendance is similar to the national average. However, there is still a small minority of pupils who are persistently absent. Teaching assistants are skilled and well deployed.

They are an asset that could be focused even more consistently. Pupils are very well behaved. They have positive attitudes to learning.

Relationships among pupils and between adults and pupils are respectful, open and kindly. Pupils enjoy learning and coming to school. Pupils' well-being and sense of community are very well supported by high-quality provision for their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

Outcomes have improved significantly. They continue to improve across the school because : of effective leadership, staff's expertise and staff's increasingly high expectations. Disadvantaged pupils, and those who have special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities, receive effective additional support.

They achieve well from their different starting points. Reading is a growing strength. Leaders have put in place imaginative approaches to reading across the school.

There is now a strongly developing culture of reading. Teaching over time is good. Tasks mostly meet the needs of pupils.

However, writing tasks set for the most able pupils, including those who are disadvantaged, do not always consistently offer enough opportunities to develop their skills as writers across the curriculum.

Information about this school

St Joseph's Catholic school is larger than the average-sized primary school. The school has a 26-place nursery provision, offering both morning and afternoon sessions.

The executive headteacher of this school is also the executive head of St Columba's Catholic primary school. The large majority of pupils come from minority ethnic backgrounds. .

The proportion of pupils new to English, or in the early stages of learning English as an additional language, is well above average. This is because there has been an increase in pupils starting school at other than the usual times, often from Eastern European countries. The proportion of disadvantaged pupils eligible for the pupil premium is significantly above the national average.

The proportion of pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities is above the national average. The school has a breakfast club that offers before-school sessions. The school meets the government's current floor standards, which set the minimum expectations for pupils' attainment and progress by the end of Year 6.