Bridge Hall Primary School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 23 July 2024

Pupils are happy and feel safe at the school. They enjoy positive relationships with staff and behave well. They know that the school welcomes their views, including those of the elected 'head pupils'. This helps them to feel valued and included. Pupils benefit from the school's recently improved supervision and organisation of activities at playtimes and lunchtimes. They behave sensibly in classrooms and outdoors. Helped by the school's improved curriculum, they are settled in lessons and enjoy learning. The school is ambitious for all pupils to do well. However, some pupils, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), do not benefit fully from the school's high expectations of their achievement. The quality of some of the curriculum in the early years is variable. In key stages 1 and 2, staff sometimes do not deliver the school's curriculum effectively. Pupils, including children in the early years, do not learn or remember some key information as well as they should. Pupils gain from the well-considered opportunities that the school arranges for them to learn about the wider world. This includes many educational trips to special places. For example, pupils in Year 6 gained confidence in their own abilities through their stay at an adventure centre, after a ferry trip across the sea.

What the school should improve

• Sometimes, staff provide activities that do not help pupils in key stages 1 and 2 to learn the school's curriculum effectively. This variability holds back some pupils' learning. The school should ensure that all staff have the support and training that they need to implement the curriculum consistently well.
• On occasion, staff do not recap previous learning enough with pupils to help them to remember important concepts. This makes it difficult for pupils to build new learning on their previous knowledge. The school should make sure that staff help pupils to establish knowledge securely in their long-term memory.
• The quality of pupils' spelling, letter formation and use of punctuation varies. This affects their ability to communicate in writing across the curriculum. The school should refine its work in this area so that pupils write with skill and fluency.
• In some of the curriculum in the early years, the key information that children should know is unclear. This makes it difficult for staff to understand which key concepts to introduce, explain and check that children remember. The school should identify with greater clarity the foundational knowledge that staff in the early years will teach and assess.

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