Webster Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

Webster Primary is a good school. Outstanding care, guidance and support and excellent partnerships with parents, carers and outside agencies, ensure that pupils are safe and extremely well cared for.

Pupils' excellent understanding of healthy lifestyles, enjoyment of school, high rates of attendance and good behaviour provide a good foundation for the future. The very large majority of pupils make outstanding progress, within the top 10% nationally, because of strong teaching and excellent support strategies. Nevertheless, while attainment is broadly average in mathematics and reading, overall it is low by the end of Year 6.

This is because although pupils make extremely good progress in rea...ding and mathematics, progress in writing is not quite as rapid. Therefore, attainment in English, although improving strongly, is still low. Pupils' outstanding progress is clear because children typically join the Early Years Foundation Stage with skills that are well below expectations.

Additionally, a high number of pupils moves into the school in Key Stage 2, often from overseas and unable to speak English, but rapidly make up for gaps in their learning. Good teaching of a rich and well-structured curriculum enables pupils to learn successfully. Many improvements have been made to the school's assessment systems, although there are still some inconsistencies in the marking of pupils' work and the level of challenge provided for more-able pupils.

Leaders and managers are relentless in driving improvement and improving teaching and learning. The school's outstanding promotion of equal opportunity is reflected, for example, in the way that individual pupils are mentored and supported to ensure that they do not fall behind. The school has built on its previous successful inspection by strengthening the work of subject leaders and improving target-setting.

Consequently, progress has accelerated and attainment has risen in all parts of the school. These factors, along with very accurate self-evaluation, lie at the heart of the school's good capacity for improvement.

Information about the school

Webster is a larger than average-sized primary school that serves the needs of a rapidly-changing inner city community.

The proportion of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals is almost four times the national average. The percentage with special educational needs and/or difficulties is well above average. The majority of pupils are of Somali and Asian heritage.

However, there are 28 nationalities represented and 20 different languages spoken. Many families moving into the area have refugee or asylum-seeker status and their children have not attended school before. Most of these pupils are at an early stage of learning English.

The movement of families into and out of the area is extremely high. Only one-third of the Year 6 pupils in 2011 had started in the nursery. The school has gained Healthy School status, the Artsmark, Activemark and International School awards and the Gold Inclusion Standard.