Warren Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Warren Primary School sits securely in the heart of its community. In this highly inclusive school pupils with a wide range of needs are warmly welcomed. Pupils are polite and enjoy positive working relationships with adults.

Classrooms are calm and productive places. This is a school where pupils learn well. Pupils, including those who are disadvantaged, achieve well in reading, writing and mathematics.

They develop as considerate, polite and confident learners.

Pupils have a strong awareness of the needs of others. Pupils respect and care for each other.

They express their opinions openly and understand the importance of equality and diversity, whi...ch are taught through a well-balanced curriculum. Behaviour records show that bullying is rare. Pupils say that any concerns they have are dealt with swiftly by adults in the school.

Parents are overwhelmingly positive about the school, leaders and staff. They recognise that the school 'respects individuality'. Families value all that the school offers.

Pupils enjoy a wide range of activities before and after school. Parents commented that, 'the school has so many extracurricular activities to ensure children are well rounded' and 'the school is excellent, the teachers really know the pupils well and are really passionate about their jobs'.

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

Leaders have a strong vision of inclusion that is shared by all staff.

Leaders ensure that staff support and training are finely tuned to help all pupils enjoy and attend school. Highly skilled adults support pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), many within its specialist resource base. The support enables pupils to work between the base and the main school seamlessly in their learning.

Carefully-planned learning ensures that pupils who sometimes find attending school difficult enjoy a full curriculum alongside their peers. Leaders work hard to ensure that the wider community understands the challenges of pupils with complex needs.

Leaders' curriculum plans clearly consider the needs of the pupils.

The plans include purposeful links to the rich resources of the local area. For example, the science and geography leaders have ensured that there is a strong focus on outdoor learning. The local river, gorge, supermarkets and industries all feature strongly within the curriculum.

Pupils learn to fully appreciate how their twenty-year-old community has evolved over time. Pupils become thoughtful citizens. They understand their own community and how it links to the wider world.

Pupils enjoy a good quality physical education (PE) and music curriculum. Many pupils take part in a wide range of sporting events. They regularly perform at community and national events.

Pupils learn well in a wide range of subjects. The school's curriculum helps pupils to make purposeful links between subjects. This helps them successfully build on prior learning.

In geography, for example, we saw that pupils were encouraged to think about the advancements in farming machinery and the impact on jobs. They explained changes using knowledge of the industrial revolution. Pupils could talk about the use of ports over time for transportation to other countries, linking to their visit to the local distribution centre.

During conversations, pupils spoke to us about closure of mines and the impact on communities, demonstrating that they could extend their learning by making wider connections. In some lessons, however, teachers do not build well enough on what pupils already know or can do.

Reading, writing and phonics are taught well.

Reading is given a high priority. The school's library provides a rich resource for pupils and families. Pupils' books are well matched to their abilities and teachers in each class share high-quality texts with pupils.

The school's 'booked-based' curriculum is helping pupils to experience a range of texts and vocabulary across subjects. Most teachers model how to use vocabulary purposefully. However, this is not yet embedded across all teaching and subjects.

Pupils enjoy and achieve well in mathematics. New leaders have started to ensure that teachers plan for pupils to build on prior skills and knowledge so that they can improve their competence and confidence while developing their mathematical skills further.

Children in the Nursery have a positive start to their education.

However, in Reception and key stage 1, not all teachers have high-enough expectations of what pupils can do. Some do not provide enough opportunities to help children continue to do the best they can in all areas of learning.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Leaders carry out the required employment checks on all adults who work with children at the school. Leaders are alert to the potential risks to pupils from county lines activity and radicalisation. Leaders have acted to raise awareness of knife crime.

The teaching of road safety is given a high priority. Pupils learn about the potential dangers of working online.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

Subject leaders demonstrate strong subject knowledge and know how to develop pupils' skills and knowledge within their subjects.

In subjects across the curriculum most teachers model purposeful subject-specific vocabulary well. However, not all teachers build on, and extend, pupils' vocabulary as successfully as others. Leaders need to be explicit about the language that they want pupils to know and by when to ensure that pupils build logically on and extend their vocabulary in each subject as they move through the school.

. Pupils attain well in reading, writing and mathematics at the end of key stages 1 and 2. Some teachers' expectations are not high enough to ensure that pupils achieve as well as they can.

Some activities, particularly in the lower years, do not consider what pupils can already do. Leaders' plans need to specify clearly what pupils need to know and be able to do, and by when. .

Most children enter the early years with skills and abilities broadly in line with their age. However, some children enter with skills above those typical for their age. Children are not always provided with activities soon enough that help them practise the skills they learn, particularly in writing.