Ysgol Y Plas

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Pupils at Ysgol Y Plas show high levels of kindness and consideration for each other.

They generally enjoy school and behave well. During their time at school, most pupils enjoy opportunities to create music and artwork and make good progress in developing these skills. Overall, they make appropriate progress in developing their literacy, numeracy and digital skills, but progress in specific aspects of literacy, particularly writing, is not always as good as it could be.

Teachers and other adults at the school create a caring atmosphere where nearly all learners feel safe and are confident that the grownups will help them when they need support. They use a good range of strategies to help pupils to participate positively i...n lessons. Teachers are beginning to take account of pupils' ideas when planning learning experiences.

Increasingly, they use innovative real-life scenarios as a stimulus for learning. Pupils respond very well in these instances and make good progress as a result. However, learning experiences do not always provide the right level of challenge for learners or match their developmental needs well enough.

For example, younger pupils do not have enough opportunities to learn through play and exploration and the school's arrangements to develop pupils' literacy skills do not always support learners to develop their skills progressively. School leaders provided effective leadership during the pandemic. Quite rightly, they focused on caring for the school community and on supporting pupils to continue to learn and develop.

Leaders work in partnership with parents and the local high school successfully to improve resources, broaden pupils' learning experiences and support transition to the next stage of learning. Leaders generally identify worthwhile priorities for improvement and support these with appropriate actions. In a few instances, such as the school's work to support pupils with additional learning needs, this work is making a positive difference.

The school's arrangements to monitor its own work have been hindered by the recent pandemic. Positive strategies, such as the involvement of governors and pupils in learning walks, have had to be suspended. Leaders have drawn upon information from national tests to inform their improvement strategy but, even when giving due consideration to the recent pandemic, they have not looked closely enough at the quality of teaching and the progress that pupils make over time.

Consequently, they have not identified important aspects of the school's work that need to be better, including provision for pupils from nursery to Year 2. Recommendations R1 Ensure that provision for three to seven-year-olds meets their developmental needs effectively, including through opportunities to learn through play and exploration R2 Improve provision to develop pupils' literacy skills, especially writing R3 Improve the strategic leadership of teaching and learning through the targeted use of evaluation activity and professional learning R4 Address the safeguarding issues identified during the inspection What happens next The school will draw up an action plan which shows how it is going to address the recommendations. Estyn will work with the local authority to review the school's progress.