Studham Village CofE Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is an outstanding school.

The headteacher has high expectations and is a highly effective leader. He has established a strong leadership team and together, they ensure high quality teaching and achievement. Pupils' behaviour is outstanding.

Their relationships with adults and each other are excellent. The school's work to keep pupils safe and secure is outstanding. Consequently, pupils enjoy school, attend regularly and work very hard.

Pupils achieve exceptionally well because teaching is consistently at least good and, increasingly, it is outstanding. Teachers know pupils very well and set exceptionally high standards for all pupils. They ensure... that learning is both interesting and exciting.

Every child's progress is frequently reviewed, and support provided if their progress is not better than expected. As a result, all pupils, including those eligible for the pupil premium, disabled pupils, those who have special educational needs and the most-able pupils achieve well. Marking frequently provides pupils with precise information about how to improve their work, and they rise to the challenge.

The teaching of phonics (linking letters and sounds) is outstanding. Results in the screening test have been well above average for the last three years. In the Reception class and across the school, pupils make rapid and sustained progress from their starting points.

More children than is usually the case nationally have reached a good level of development by the time they leave Reception; they are well-prepared to join Key Stage 1. Pupils reach standards that are consistently above average in reading, writing and mathematics at the end of Year 2. Standards are also higher than those typically found by the end of Year 4.

The school's values and beliefs are shared with the pupils and these contribute to pupils' excellent social, moral, spiritual and cultural development. Governors make a strong contribution to the school's outcomes, holding leaders and managers at all levels to account. They confidently evaluate the performance of the school through robust scrutiny of the detailed information they receive.

The school takes full advantage of its partnership with local schools in the area to share expertise and to enhance the quality of teaching and learning. Although pupils are very well prepared for the middle school stage of their education, their attainment in writing, and specifically in their spelling, presentation and handwriting, is slightly behind their impressive reading and mathematical skills. School leaders, including governors, have worked well to improve the quality of teaching and raise pupils' achievement since the last inspection and the school is well placed to maintain its high quality provision.

Information about this school

The school is a very small, rural school serving the villages of Studham and Whipsnade and a wide area around it. The overwhelming majority of pupils are of white British heritage and no pupils speak English as an additional language. The proportion of pupils eligible for the pupil premium is around 10%, which is below average.

The pupil premium provides additional funding for pupils in local authority care and those known to be eligible for free school meals. The proportion of disabled pupils and those with special educational needs supported through school action is about 8%, which is below the national average. Pupils are taught full-time in a Reception class, and in two other mixed-age classes, one class for Years 1 and 2 and the other for Years 3 and 4.

The school has recently entered into a collaboration arrangement with two other local lower schools and the middle school which most of the pupils move to. Together they form the Priory Partnership for Learning. The schools' governing bodies remain separate.