Werrington Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Werrington Primary School is a happy place to learn, where everyone is respected. Pupils follow the school's values of being kind, respectful and responsible and doing their best.

Pupils embrace these values and try hard to follow them.

Pupils behave well and show high levels of engagement and interest in lessons. Relationships between staff and pupils are strong.

Pupils are confident to share their worries with staff. Pupils enjoy the fun activities and experiences that teachers plan for them. For example, the whole school enjoyed the Year 6 enterprise summer fair.

Teachers explain learning clearly. The curriculum is tailored to meet pupils' needs, ...including pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). As a result, pupils achieve well.

Through the wide enrichment opportunities, pupils learn about their local area and the world around them. They talk enthusiastically about visitors and the places they have been to. Pupils value the responsibilities they have to make the school a better place.

These include school council representatives, house captains and prefects. There are a range of clubs on offer, but pupils would welcome more opportunities for clubs and leadership roles.

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

Reading is a priority in this school.

Leaders understand the different needs of all pupils and are ambitious for everyone to be a fluent reader as soon as possible. From Reception, routines are quickly established. Reading for pleasure is at the heart of the school.

Pupils regularly visit the school library and enjoy listening to staff read to them daily. They enjoy the reading shed, which pupils can access during breaktimes and lunchtimes. Children in the early years retell stories with enthusiasm.

All of this helps pupils to develop a love of reading.

Staff are well trained in teaching the phonics scheme. They identify quickly any pupils who are not keeping up.

Teachers adjust lessons and provide additional support for those who need it. Pupils regularly practise reading with books carefully matched to the sounds they have learned. This helps pupils' fluency to develop quickly.

The school's curriculum is ambitious and well planned. In most subjects, the school has identified important skills and knowledge that pupils should learn, ensuring that new learning builds on what has been taught previously. For example, in science, pupils build their skills of scientific enquiry year on year.

However, in some subjects, this is not always the case. This means that teachers do not always teach the important content and knowledge that pupils will need for future learning.

Teachers' strong subject knowledge and appropriate adaptations help all pupils to learn well.

Extra adults also support pupils with SEND effectively. For example, skilful questioning and the use of additional resources help pupils with SEND to learn well.

Teachers use regular checks on what pupils know effectively in most subjects.

In a few subjects, approaches to checking pupils' understanding are not fully developed. This means that teachers do not identify gaps in pupils' knowledge quickly enough. This limits how well pupils progress in their learning in these subjects.

The school carries out regular checks on pupils' attendance. This helps to identify pupils who need support to attend school regularly. The school works hard to build strong relationships with families and overcome barriers to regular attendance.

As a result, attendance is high.

Pupils share their opinions on the school's development. They help staff to make changes to the systems and routines to make the school a happier place to learn.

Pupils follow the '4S' approach for moving around the school safely. Pupils value the lunchtime restaurant, which has made lunchtime a more social event and where pupils learn restaurant manners.

The curriculum encourages pupils to understand and reflect on the world around them.

They learn about different cultures and religions. Staying safe is a feature of the curriculum, including learning about staying safe online. Children in Reception learn about staying safe in the sun and older pupils learn about their safety with skills like riding their bikes on the road.

Governors and trustees hold leaders to account. They ask questions and collect and connect information to show that the curriculum and leaders' actions are having a positive impact on school improvement.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• In some subjects, the school has not set out clearly what it wants pupils to know and learn. This means that teachers do not know the core knowledge that pupils need to know and that they need to build on to progress through the curriculum. As a result, pupils' knowledge is not secure, and they struggle to connect prior learning to new learning.

The school needs to ensure that it identifies clearly the core knowledge that pupils should learn in each subject ? In a few subjects, the school's approaches to checking pupils' understanding are currently not fully developed. This means that teachers are not identifying gaps in pupils' knowledge quickly enough and this is limiting pupils' progress, as work is not always well matched to what pupils already know. The school needs to ensure that approaches are in place for teachers to check what pupils have learned and use this to plan lessons and set work that matches pupils' stage of learning so that pupils can build on their learning over time.

Also at this postcode