St Mary’s Church of England Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

At St Mary's, pupils are happy. At lunchtimes, they enjoy activities such as dancing, collecting snails and playing sports together. They chat and interact in a friendly way.

Pupils are confident that staff will listen to them and help them sort things out. This helps keep pupils safe.

Pupils are now very clear about how to behave.

They know and follow the new school rules. Those pupils who need it get lots of extra support to manage their emotions. This includes being able to spend time in 'The Nest', where they can undertake calming activities such as Lego.

Pupils have experienced recent improvements in what they learn. They now study a full range ...of subjects. They benefit from a clear approach to learning to read.

However, all of this is relatively new. Many pupils have not built up strong and secure subject knowledge or learned to read well enough.

There are many opportunities for pupils to pursue their interests.

Pupils who are part of the eco-council have raised lots of money for charity by recycling. They have worked to make the school environmentally friendly and have learned all about how to be responsible global citizens.

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

The school has not ensured that all pupils achieve as well as they should.

Outcomes in the 2023 national tests and assessments were low. This is because the school had not ensured that a suitable curriculum was in place or that it was taught well enough. Consequently, pupils developed gaps in what they should have known.

Governors did not have an accurate enough picture of the quality of education at the school to be able to challenge this robustly enough or to ensure prompt action was taken to address it.

The school has made significant changes in leadership. New school leaders have set about addressing these issues effectively.

They have ensured that a suitable curriculum is now in place. They have started training subject leaders so that they can support teachers in each subject effectively. This is successfully impacting on improving teachers' subject knowledge.

Although teaching is improving, there are still too many teachers who do not check carefully enough what pupils know, and adapt what they teach to take account of this. This means that while pupils build important knowledge, they do not do so consistently well.

The school has trained staff in a new approach to teaching reading.

Although this is helping to improve how well pupils can read, it is not fully established. Too many pupils make mistakes in reading and spelling unfamiliar words, because some staff do not help them to learn and remember the phonics knowledge needed to do so. This includes children in early years.

This means that some pupils' reading lacks fluency. However, the school has worked to grow a love of reading through dedicated reading time. Consequently, more pupils are developing positive attitudes towards reading.

Children in the early years follow a curriculum that covers all areas of learning. For example, they learn about expressive arts and mathematics by learning about doubles, and then painting butterflies linked to this. However, teachers do not always provide activities that reinforce learning important knowledge so that children remember it.

For example, children had learned about parts of a butterfly but were unsure how to identify these, because planned activities did not reinforce this well enough.

The school has enabled pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities to access the curriculum. This is because staff are aware of pupils' needs and cater for them by adapting learning effectively.

Consequently, they learn more successfully than many of their peers.

The school has made significant improvements to pupils' behaviour recently. Pupils now follow the school rules.

The school has put in place lots of additional support, such as counselling, emotional literacy and therapy. This helps pupils to be able to manage their emotions and behave well.

The school promotes pupils' personal development well, through opportunities such as the 'faith council'.

The 'secret detective society' celebrates and shares community and charity work. Pupils excitedly add 'cubes to the tube' when they have demonstrated the school's values. This helps them learn about democracy.

Pupils recently agreed on a school reward of playground scooters. A range of clubs and competitive sporting opportunities further support pupils' social development.

Leaders and those responsible for governance have recognised that the school needed to improve.

They have put in place clear plans to address this, while at the same time being considerate of staff's workload and well-being. These plans are showing early signs of impact. Trustees recognise that continuing to improve processes for challenge and support are paramount.

This includes following through with plans to ensure school leaders have the capacity they need for continued improvement.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• The school has not ensured that all pupils can read fluently enough.

As a result, younger pupils in particular make too many mistakes with decoding and blending words. This is because they have not secured their knowledge of how to use phonics well enough. The school needs to ensure that it provides further guidance and support for staff to teach the phonics programme effectively, so that pupils can decode and blend with confidence and read with age-appropriate levels of fluency.

• In some subjects, teachers do not routinely check what pupils know and then use this information to plan learning that builds on pupils' prior knowledge effectively. As a result, particularly in the foundation subjects, pupils do not secure or retain important knowledge as well as they should. The school needs to ensure that teachers carefully check what pupils know and then use this information to plan and adapt learning to build pupils' subject knowledge effectively.

• Trustees have not challenged with enough rigour and precision to have full awareness of the extent of the issues the school faced. As a result, the quality of education at the school has declined, because trustees have not dealt quickly and effectively enough with issues where they have existed. Trustees need to ensure they use a range of information so that they have a clear and accurate picture of the quality of education at the school and can use this to challenge and support school leaders to bring about necessary improvements.

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