Yarlside Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils thrive at this school. They arrive with beaming smiles and a visible enthusiasm for the day ahead. From the early years to Year 6, pupils are known and understood incredibly well by staff.

Staff provide comfort and care, ensuring that the needs of pupils are met. Pupils' behaviour is impeccable. They are highly respectful of each other and towards staff.

The trust and the school have a strong shared vision of high-quality education and achievement for all. Pupils at Yarlside live and breathe this aspiration. They progress through subject curriculums exceptionally well.

Published results for reading, writing and mathematics are consistently well above t...he national average.

Pupils' learning is enriched by experiences that bring the curriculum to life. Visits by professionals, including authors, artists and engineers, ignite pupils' curiosity and ambition for the future.

Pupils take part in a wide range of trips. From Year 3, they go on annual residential visits, including to London.

The school goes above and beyond the expected in ensuring that pupils can develop their interests and talents.

Pupils enjoy an impressive range of extra-curricular activities, including science, cooking, choir and sports. The school ensures that all pupils represent the school at events each year.

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

Pupils benefit from a highly aspirational and broad curriculum.

The school has meticulously designed its subject curriculums to build on pupils' knowledge with consistency and precision. Staff make sure that activities are expertly matched to what pupils need to learn next, within and across subjects. Pupils develop a deep body of knowledge and are exceptionally well prepared for the next stage of their education.

The school makes careful and purposeful checks on pupils' learning. This is seamlessly woven into each lesson and over time. Staff are highly skilled at using the information gained from these checks to provide pupils with timely, tailored support within lessons.

This helps pupils, and children in the early years, to make rapid gains in their learning and ensures that their knowledge builds securely.

Children in the early years listen to a variety of nursery rhymes and stories, which they readily retell with accuracy. Across all classes, the words that pupils should learn each year are clearly identified and introduced expertly by staff.

Pupils develop an extensive knowledge of vocabulary and become confident, articulate communicators.

The school's phonics programme is delivered exceptionally well. Staff ensure that pupils across the school read books and extracts from larger texts that are precisely matched to their phonics level.

This helps pupils to develop their reading fluency. The school is tenacious in ensuring that pupils who find reading difficult are supported effectively to be successful. Published outcomes in reading and phonics are significantly above the national average.

The school accurately identifies the needs of pupils with special educational needs and/ or disabilities (SEND). It works in partnership with parents and carers and external agencies to ensure that these needs are fully understood and met. Pupils with SEND make significant progress in their learning as the curriculum and the resources that support it are tailored to the needs of individuals.

Pupils in all classes have highly positive attitudes to their learning and take their education seriously. They focus intently, are diligent in completing their work and move around the school sensibly. The school's high expectations of attendance are clear from the outset.

It engages well with families to support them in ensuring that their children's attendance remains high.

The school's work to promote pupils' personal and character development is exceptional. Pupils have many opportunities to find out about the diverse world around them.

They read books that celebrate difference and learn about different faiths through meeting religious leaders. The trust has supported the school to forge links with local businesses to further enrich the curriculum. For example, professionals from local industries lead engineering workshops in school and work with pupils on financial projects.

Pupils contribute to the local community in many ways, including through litter picking and charity work. Pupils proudly take on leadership roles that make a positive difference to other pupils and to the life of the school.

The school, with the support of the trust, has ensured that staff benefit from highly effective professional development.

Staff develop their knowledge, expertise and leadership skills through working with other schools in the trust. Their well-being and workload are fully considered by the school. Staff morale is high.

Trustees and Governors understand their responsibilities, which are clearly defined through the trust's structures and systems. They carry out a range of activities to assure themselves that the quality of education remains exceptional at the school.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.