Westacre Infant School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Westacre Infant is a friendly and welcoming school.

The school's values of kindness, friendship, respect, honesty, teamwork and perseverance are strong features of school life. Pupils work and play together well. The school teaches pupils to celebrate their differences.

Pupils said that learning about different cultures and faiths helps them to treat each other with kindness and respect.

Pupils behave well around school and in lessons. Staff build strong, positive relationships with pupils.

Consequently, pupils are happy and feel safe at school. They are confident that staff will listen to them and help them if they have any concerns or worries. Bull...ying is rare, but when it occurs, staff deal with it quickly and effectively.

The school is ambitious for all pupils, and they achieve well. Those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) receive the extra help they need so they make good progress.

Pupils love contributing to school life.

They enjoy taking on responsibilities as reading ambassadors and members of the pupil leadership team. The school encourages pupils to try out new things. Pupils spoke excitedly about having their achievements recognised on the wall of fame.

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

The school's broad and ambitious curriculum reflects its high aspirations for all pupils. Beginning in the Nursery Year, the school has identified the essential knowledge that pupils need and the order in which they learn it. Consequently, pupils build their knowledge and skills well.

For example, adding groups of objects helps pupils to understand mathematical concepts before they begin to write calculations.

Reading has a high priority. Daily phonics lessons ensure that pupils learn and practise new sounds in their reading.

Well-trained staff use their skills to teach phonics consistently and effectively. Staff quickly identify pupils who need extra help, and ensure that they receive the support they need to catch up. Adults carefully match the books that pupils read to the sounds they know.

This builds pupils' confidence and helps to develop a love of reading. The school encourages pupils to read widely. They avidly complete their coloured bookworms and wear their bookworm badges with pride.

The school uses books well to engage pupils in their learning. For example, Year 2 pupils recalled extracts from the diary of Samuel Pepys when learning about the Great Fire of London.

In reading and mathematics, staff skilfully check what pupils know and remember.

Teachers make sure that pupils recall previous learning. This helps to develop pupils' knowledge over time. In other subjects, these checks are at an earlier stage of development.

Consequently, in these curriculum areas some pupils are less confident to recall knowledge as fluently as they should.

The school identifies pupils with SEND quickly. Staff provide the extra support these pupils need so they achieve well.

The school ensures that pupils with social and emotional needs are well supported, for example by time in the Rainbow Room.

Pupils behave well in lessons and around school. They are polite and well mannered.

They enjoy the wide range of experiences on offer. The Westacre Wonders initiative promotes pupils' personal development well. It ensures that pupils have opportunities to learn new skills, such as performing for others.

Pupils enjoy a wide range of visits, including a residential experience in Year 2. Visitors from the local community enhance the curriculum. Many pupils participate in after-school activities such as football, drawing and computer clubs.

Staff plan outdoor activities that develop pupils' curiosity and imagination. Children enjoy playing and learning in the garden and in forest school. For example, they hunted for dinosaurs hidden among the trees.

Skilful questioning from an adult extended children's vocabulary as they watched the patterns made by the flames in the fire pit.

The school has been through a period of change. Leaders, including governors, have taken very effective steps to improve the quality of education at Westacre.

They know its strengths and weaknesses. They recognise that they do not always identify quickly enough when things are working well so they can concentrate on aspects that need further improvement.

All parents and carers who responded to Parent View, Ofsted's online questionnaire, said they would recommend the school to others.

There are many opportunities for parents to visit the school to see what their children are learning. For example, parents enjoy the Nursery Year stay-and-play activities.

Staff are proud to belong to Westacre.

They feel valued and very well supported. Highly effective senior leaders inspire the staff's commitment to working together for the benefit of all pupils.

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's work to establish an assessment system is in the early stages of implementation in some foundation subjects. This means that teachers' checks on what pupils know are not as effective as they could be. The school should ensure that assessment is used to check what pupils know and remember and that staff use this information to plan pupils' next steps in learning.

• The school has used wide-ranging monitoring as the basis for significant improvements since the previous inspection but has not refined the use of information gained from monitoring activities. Consequently, this information is not used precisely enough to focus on the most important things the school needs to do next. The school should review its approach to school improvement planning to ensure that leaders and governors concentrate on the key actions that need to be taken to further improve the school.