Croftlands Infant School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 28 November 2023

Pupils are happy to attend Croftlands Infant School. They enjoy playing with their friends at playtimes. Children in the early years, including two-year-olds, settle into school life well. They trust the staff to care for them, including when they need comfort or reassurance. The school is ambitious for all pupils to achieve well. This includes pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Pupils enjoy learning and try their best. They typically achieve well. This means that when pupils leave the school at the end of Year 2, they are ready for their next steps in education. Pupils behave well in lessons and around school. They learn to treat each other with respect as soon as they join the school in the early years. Pupils are polite to adults. The school is a calm and friendly place to learn and play. Pupils enjoy a broad range of opportunities and experiences that enrich the curriculum. This includes donating food to the local foodbank and raising funds for charities. Pupils also benefit from educational trips and visits, such as a visit to a castle, canoeing on a lake and singing in a music festival.

What the school should improve

• In a few subjects and areas of learning, the school has not identified clearly enough the most important knowledge that children in the early years and pupils in key stage 1 should learn. This means that teachers do not emphasise and revisit some important ideas and concepts. Consequently, in these subjects, pupils do not develop the detailed knowledge that they do in others. The school should ensure that subject curriculums set out the important knowledge for pupils to learn.
• In a small number of subjects, the school's approaches to checking on pupils' knowledge and understanding are underdeveloped. On occasion, this stops teachers from being certain that pupils have gained the knowledge that they should before they introduce new learning. The school should determine how best to check that pupils have learned the intended curriculum. It should also ensure that teachers are suitably equipped to use assessment strategies with confidence and accuracy, ensuring that gaps in pupils' learning are identified and tackled quickly.
• The school does not make certain that some staff have up-to-date training on some aspects of safeguarding. In addition, the school's safer recruitment checks lack rigour. This makes it difficult for the school and governors to evaluate the effectiveness of their safeguarding practices. The school should ensure that it systematically develops staff's safeguarding knowledge. It should also make sure that its safer recruitment procedures are thorough and that there is a full and accurate record of checks undertaken.

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