Bishop John Robinson Church of England Primary School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 24 April 2024

This is a small school where staff know and care for pupils. The values of compassion, trust and forgiveness are embedded in the life of the school. Working relationships between adults and children are warm and nurturing. Pupils know they can talk to someone if they are worried about anything. They feel safe and happy in school. As a result, pupils are rarely absent. Pupils benefit from the many leadership opportunities. For example, some older pupils are junior travel ambassadors. Pupils can also join the school council, or become house captains, eco-warriors or 'happiness heroes'. The school ensures that it teaches pupils about how to look after their well-being and regulate their emotions. The school has high expectations for pupils, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). However, these expectations are not realised securely. The support for pupils' reading is not as effective as it should be. Across the wider curriculum, the school has not identified what pupils need to know and remember in each subject and the order in which it should be taught. Consequently, the curriculum does not support pupils to achieve as well as they should, including in the early years.

What the school should improve

• Teaching in phonics does not offer pupils regular practise in hearing and saying the phonic sounds they are learning. Pupils do not have routine opportunities to read books with the key sounds that they are learning in them. As a result, pupils do not recall some sounds readily, and this prevents them from reading with fluency. The school must ensure that pupils practise phonic sounds regularly and read books that are matched to the sounds they are learning.
• The curriculum in several subjects does not identify the important knowledge that pupils should learn and remember. As a result, pupils do not develop their understanding successfully in these subjects. The school must ensure that it sets out clearly what they expect pupils to learn. This should be sequenced carefully so that pupils develop and embed their understanding over time.
• The checking of pupils' understanding during lessons is not routinely in place. As a result, misconceptions in pupils' learning persist. This limits what some pupils learn and remember. The school must ensure that the checking of pupils' learning is effective so that any errors can be rectified swiftly.
• The curriculum in early years is at an early stage of development. The school has not identified precisely what they want children to learn in each area of learning and how this builds progressively. This means that children are not as well prepared as they should be for future learning in Year 1 and beyond. The school should ensure that the curriculum in early years is coherently planned, well sequenced and closely connected to the curriculum for older pupils.

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