Brierley Hill Primary School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 25 March 2025

The school is going through a lot of change. After a decline in standards, and high pupil absence, fresh leadership has brought higher expectations. Pupils are responding well to these. This shows in their very positive behaviour, increasing attendance and attentive attitudes to learning. Pupils appreciate the school's recent work to improve their education and raise their aspirations. For instance, they like having consistent and ambitious expectations for the quality of their work. This helps them to get better at different subjects. Pupils take pride in their achievements. They also benefit from the different sports and clubs on offer. Pupils feel safe at the school. They also feel valued because staff praise and encourage them. This helps pupils to feel good about themselves and what they can do. Relationships between pupils are positive. Disagreements between pupils happen occasionally, but staff support pupils to learn from experience and to develop empathy. Leaders and governors put pupils' interests first. When necessary, they take decisive and effective action to bring about improvement in the school's work. Nevertheless, there is still more to do to develop the quality of teaching and pupils' learning in different subjects, and to increase attendance. However, the school has established a shared vision and ambition for all pupils to achieve well.

What the school should improve

• Until recently, phonics and reading have not been taught with sufficient rigour. This has led to a decline in standards and expectations. The school has now put new systems and higher expectations in place, but it is still early days. The school should ensure that its teaching of phonics and reading leads to strong achievement by pupils.
• Staff's knowledge of how pupils make progress in different foundation subjects is not consistently secure. They follow the school's curriculum guidance but are not clear about which key knowledge to emphasise to pupils, and why. This holds back pupils' achievement in these subjects. The school should support staff to implement the new curriculum in foundation subjects to best effect.
• Too many pupils miss school too often for no good reason. This means they miss important learning and fall behind. The school should strengthen its work with families and professional services to support pupils to attend regularly.

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