St Mary’s RC Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

St Mary's Catholic Primary School is a good school where pupils from a wide range of minority ethnic heritages get on very well together.

Pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is outstanding and this is reflected in their consistently kind and considerate behaviour. As one pupil said, 'We are just making the world a lot better.' This desire is thoroughly reflected in pupils' thoughts and prayers that are displayed throughout school.

They have compassion for those less fortunate than themselves and particularly understand the difficulties of children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Pupils take a considerable amount of pride in the school. They feel excep...tionally safe and are confident that staff take their concerns seriously.

Children get off to a good start in the pre-school and Reception class, because they both offer an interesting learning environment reinforced by high quality adult support. Although improvements have been made to the way children's progress is assessed, the school is not making the best use of this information to make a rigorous judgement about their skills on entry and to analyse variations in outcomes for different groups of children. Pupils make good progress through Key Stages 1 and 2 because of good teaching combined with a good curriculum.

Attainment is above average by the end of Year 6 and pupils achieve well. Although progress is good, it is more uneven in Key Stage 2 than in Key Stage 1. This is because of minor variations in the quality of teaching in Key Stage 2, for example, occasionally introductions to lessons are too long.

In particular, more-able pupils have to sit and listen, relatively unchallenged, when they could be getting on with their work. Significant improvements have been made to the quality of marking and to the way academic targets are used to support learning. Nevertheless, marking and guidance varies from outstanding to satisfactory.

Consequently, some pupils in Key Stage 2 do not always get the very best advice about how to improve their work. The leadership and ambition of the headteacher, senior managers and the governing body have been pivotal to continuously developing a school where every child is valued and enabled to succeed. Morale is high and belief in the school's success runs through all levels of staff.

There is a good awareness of the school's overarching strengths and weaknesses and development planning accurately focuses on those areas where there is the most need for improvement. The impact made by coordinators has improved and they are now more involved in monitoring teaching. However, their lesson observations do not always pay enough attention to the way teaching strategies impact on learning and as a result some of the judgements made by coordinators are over generous.

The use of data is improving and much has been done to improve the accuracy of assessments. A close eye is kept on the progress of individual pupils but the analysis of the progress of different groups, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, is less rigorous. Additionally, not enough has been done to investigate the impact of intervention programmes for different groups of learners.

Attainment is rising, particularly by the end of Key Stage 1. The curriculum is much improved and pupils see learning as relevant and fun. Additionally, more pupils are now attending school regularly.

All this reflects the school's good capacity to improve further.

Information about the school

The school is smaller than most primary schools. The proportion of pupils from minority ethnic groups is rising and is now above average, as is the proportion of pupils whose first language is not believed to be English.

These pupils come from a wide range of different ethnic backgrounds and include pupils of Traveller heritage. The proportion of pupils identified as having special educational needs and/or disabilities is below average but the proportion of pupils with a statement of needs is above average. The pre-school provision that is managed by the school's governing body was included in this inspection.