Ashcott Primary School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 3 December 2024

Ashcott Primary School is a community school in every sense. Pupils benefit greatly from the shared ambition and approach to school development and decision-making. This involves the pupils themselves and their active school council, as well as staff, governors, parents and carers and members of the wider village community. Pupils are rightly proud of their school's welcoming, kind and nurturing culture. Parents are overwhelmingly positive about the difference the school makes to their children, both academically and more widely. The school expects pupils to achieve well and they do, particularly in reading. Pupils are ambitious because staff foster this and are dedicated to getting the best from them. The 'buddy system' is successful, along with plentiful leadership roles, in preparing pupils to manage responsibility well. They learn and understand the importance of conducting themselves well, and most do. This creates a harmonious school environment, where pupils feel safe, attend frequently and get along well with each other. Pupils agree that 'everyone's differences are welcome'. They talk with an informed awareness of how people can be different and that this is something to be respected and celebrated. This begins from the very start in Reception, where children settle quickly into the school's culture, routines and expectations.

What the school should improve

• Some subjects in the wider curriculum are not as well embedded as others. Checks to ensure that pupils have secure prior learning, so that they can build on this, are not developed well enough. Information to inform curriculum development is not as extensive. This means that, in these subjects, pupils do not learn as well as they could. The school should ensure that its vision, to prepare pupils for life in modern Britain, is fully supported by a well-embedded wider curriculum, which increases pupils' knowledge of the world around them and supports the strength of the curriculum offer in English and mathematics.
• There is not a fully shared approach to the expectations of pupils' behaviour for learning. This results in a lack of clarity from pupils about what is expected of them to be successful learners and maintain positive attitudes to their learning. The school should ensure that the systems and approaches it has in place are fully embedded in day-to-day classroom practice so that pupils are clear about, and can meet, the high expectations that staff have of them, with increasing success across the four classes.

Read the full Ofsted report (opens in a new tab)