The Baird Primary Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

All pupils and their families are assured of a warm welcome at The Baird. Many pupils join the school at different stages of their education and at different times of the year.

Each pupil's unique circumstances and needs are considered and responded to. This is a profoundly inclusive school. However, pupils' low attendance means that exciting opportunities to learn are missed too often.

Right from the start in Nursery and Reception, children develop positive relationships with adults and their peers. Pupils understand that staff are there to help them develop skills for life, as well as to learn the academic curriculum. There is a happy atmosphere throughout the schoo...l as pupils play and learn together.

Staff set clear expectations. Through 'coaching conversations', adults help pupils to develop strategies to manage their own behaviour successfully. Pupils generally rise to expectations and focus on their learning.

Pupils benefit from extensive opportunities for new experiences to develop ambition and learn about staying safe in the wider world. The school's motto of 'everyone safe, everyone learning, everyone empowered in school' is brought to life daily. However, standards being achieved, especially in writing, are not supporting pupils to be prepared well for transition to secondary school.

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

Published data for 2023 indicates that pupils in key stage 2 were not well prepared for the next stages of their education. Pupils, notably most-able pupils, made poor progress through the curriculum. Overall, standards achieved were low, particularly in writing.

Current pupils are making faster progress and standards are rising.

School and trust leaders have reviewed and strengthened the school's curriculum. Subjects are planned to ensure that pupils' knowledge builds over time, with opportunities to practise new skills and to make links with previous learning.

Visits to lessons and pupils' workbooks indicate that in reading, mathematics and science, pupils are learning well. Systems used by teachers and leaders to check how well all pupils are learning and progressing have been strengthened. Teachers adapt learning tasks and use precise questioning to support or extend learning.

Pupils receive extra help where required. Pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) typically progress well through precisely tailored learning programmes. The school's nurture provision enables pupils to acquire essential social and emotional skills.

In some subjects, improvements are at earlier stages of implementation and expectations of what pupils, including the most able, can achieve are not sufficiently high. Standards in writing, as part of English lessons, are improving. However, pupils' writing in subjects such as geography and history does not reflect the quality of writing achieved in English.

Children get off to a busy, joyful and successful start in Nursery and Reception. Pupils dig, climb, construct and investigate. They learn collaboratively and independently, showing enthusiasm and determination.

Staff design consistent opportunities for pupils to develop early reading and writing skills through the range of carefully planned and structured activities.

Reading is prioritised well. Staff teach early reading skilfully.

Pupils participate eagerly in activities to identify sounds and to read and write increasingly complex words. Pupils read books accurately matched to the sounds that they know, building their confidence and fluency in reading. The 'reading aloud curriculum' ensures that pupils hear, and consider, high-quality texts of different genres, including from other cultures.

The reading curriculum fosters a love of reading and contributes well to pupils' wider development.

Provision for pupils' personal development is extensive. Experiences are designed to widen pupils' experiences, to challenge their thinking, to build ambition and to prepare them for future life.

In addition to exploring different faiths and healthy living, pupils also develop digital literacy skills and learn about brain function.

The school's approach to behaviour focuses on supporting pupils to identify and manage their emotions. Negative behaviours are followed up with reflective conversations to help pupils manage similar situations more successfully.

Behaviour records show that incidents of negative behaviour have reduced. In class and around school, pupils typically behave well, work hard and speak politely to adults and peers.

The school works with unwavering tenacity in the drive to improve pupils' attendance.

Support for families, and engagement with wider agencies to tackle absenteeism, is extensive. Small gains are being achieved.

Teaching staff feel supported and able to take concerns to leaders and say that their workload is considered.

Trustees and local governors have clearly defined, complementary roles and know the school deeply. Support and challenge are provided where needed, and improvements follow. For example, pupils in the older year groups are benefiting from catch-up sessions in English and mathematics additionally financed by the trust.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• Whole-school absence is high. Consequently, too many pupils do not benefit as well as they could from the learning and wider opportunities offered by the school.

The school should persist in its extensive endeavours, including its engagement with other services to continue to improve attendance further. ? Standards in writing are too low. This means that pupils are not prepared well for their next steps in education.

The school should ensure that across all year groups, teachers accurately understand what constitutes writing at the expected standard and greater depth in order that the curriculum builds, and pupils learn, in coherent steps towards known, ambitious end points. In addition, raised expectations for writing as part of the English curriculum should be replicated across the curriculum so that pupils practise and extend their writing skills more effectively. ? The quality of pupils' learning varies too widely.

The reviewed curriculum is at different stages of implementation. In some subjects, expectations of what pupils will learn, particularly the most-able pupils, are not sufficiently high. The school should ensure the planned curriculum improvements are fully implemented and that ambitious intended outcomes are clearly defined and understood by staff so that teaching enables all pupils to make good progress across the curriculum.