Two Waters Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Being a pupil at Two Waters means being part of a caring and inclusive community. Everyone is encouraged to thrive and reach their potential.

Pupils feel safe and valued. This is because there is a supportive environment, where everyone's differences are celebrated. For example, the school recently put on a 'paralympic roadshow', which enabled pupils with special educational needs and/or physical disabilities (SEND) to shine.

Pupils benefit from a broad and ambitious curriculum. This includes a strong focus on developing their love of reading. Older pupils take great pride in their roles as reading ambassadors.

They help inspire younger pupils to develop a lo...ve of books. While pupils achieve very well in reading and mathematics, they do not always get the support needed to develop their handwriting skills effectively.Pupils behave well.

This is because they understand the school's expectations and look forward to getting house points for positive behaviour. They are confident that any issues, including perceived bullying, are addressed promptly and effectively.Children in early years enjoy a stimulating and nurturing environment.

There are many interesting activities to explore. However, they do not always have enough suitable opportunities to develop their writing skills.

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

The school's curriculum is broad and covers the full national curriculum.

Leaders have carefully planned the important knowledge that pupils should learn across the main school. However, this is less well developed in early years, as knowledge intended for children to learn has not always been thought through carefully enough.Experienced teachers are more ambitious in taking planned knowledge and exploring it with pupils in more depth.

Where this is the case, pupils develop deeper and more complex understanding and achieve very well. The school recognises this and has plans to address it.

Teachers actively foster a love for reading among pupils.

This starts with effective phonics teaching in the early years, where children are well supported in decoding and blending words. This provides the secure foundation they need to read fluently and access increasingly challenging books.

The school provides a wealth of opportunities to explore and enjoy books.

Books are everywhere, from classrooms, to the school library, to pupils reading them in playgrounds. Pupils are passionate about reading and have developed a clear love for it.

Although the school has taken effective steps to develop writing, the quality of pupils' handwriting is not consistently high.

This is because in the lower school, including early years, the approach to developing early letter formation and simple sentence construction has not been as effective as intended. Some pupils do not consolidate these basic elements strongly, before moving on to more complex writing.The school excels in supporting pupils with SEND.

Staff skilfully tailor learning and carefully consider education, health, and care plans to remove any barriers to participation. This ensures that all pupils with SEND are fully included and achieve as well as possible.Pupils attend and behave very well as they know and follow the school values, such as respect.

Most pupils find lessons engaging and want to learn. Any instances of low-level disruption are addressed quickly. In early years, children share and take turns and include each other.

However, there are occasions when teachers expect pupils to concentrate for longer periods than they are able to. This impacts on some younger children's motivation for learning.

Personal development is richly promoted.

Pupils take pride in their leadership roles. These include house captains, which create cohesion between year groups. There are highly meaningful opportunities for pupils to learn about fundamental British values, such as democracy and citizenship.

These include standing for election, raising money for charity and working with the elderly. The school also offers an extensive range of extracurricular activities, trips, and clubs that are carefully planned to ensure everyone benefits. Over time, these build a rich tapestry of wider experiences.

For example, pupils have been to the theatre to develop their understanding of Shakespeare and participated in high ropes courses to build their confidence and teamwork skills.

The school proactively involve parents in pupils' education. This is reflected in the number of parents running clubs.

Governors know the school well. For example, they carefully planned for the recent period of transition, during which a few experienced teachers moved on to promotions. This ensured that new teachers have the support they need.

The school engages effectively with staff regarding well-being but recognise that further work is needed to refine workload in line with new assessment systems.

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 its programme for developing pupils' handwriting is effectively structured from the early years.

As a result, some pupils advance to more complex writing without fully consolidating essential transcription skills, such as letter formation, word spacing, and alignment. The school needs to establish a clear approach to handwriting development that strengthens transcription skills from the early years, ensuring pupils have a solid foundation for more advanced writing. ? The school is redeveloping the early years curriculum.

As such, in some areas of learning it is not fully clear what children should learn. Certain activities in early years do not develop children's knowledge and skills effectively, particularly in writing and transcription. The school needs to ensure that the intended knowledge is carefully planned and sequenced, with activities consistently supporting the development of these skills.