Dorchester St Birinus Church of England School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 1 April 2025

Pupils love coming to this nurturing school, where everyone is valued and included. The school ensures that each child can participate fully, in both the academic curriculum and a wealth of enrichment opportunities. The school's values are central to the work and the culture in the school. Pupils have a deep understanding of the importance of 'compassion', 'knowledge' and 'diversity'. The school has renewed expectations for pupils to achieve highly. Pupils work hard and take pride in discussing their ideas and work. However, some pupils do not achieve as well as they should do. The school continues to put in place appropriate actions to improve this, but these have not yet had the impact that they need to. Consequently, in some subjects, too many pupils do not have the secure knowledge and skills that they need by the end of key stage 2. Pupils are polite and respectful. They treat each other with kindness. Pupil leaders contribute to school life as classroom 'monitors' or assembly 'IT technicians'. Social times are joyful. Pupils know that they are cared for and safe. They benefit from warm relationships with staff, who know every child well.

What the school should improve

• In some parts of the curriculum, the school has not identified precisely what knowledge pupils need to be taught. Where this is the case, pupils are not learning the curriculum as securely as they could. The school should make sure that the curriculum is designed with consistent rigour and ambitious end points, so that it is clear to staff and pupils what the important knowledge is within each teaching sequence and how this knowledge builds over time.
• At times, the tasks given to pupils do not enable them to use or practise the knowledge that they have been taught sufficiently well. This means that pupils struggle to learn and recall this knowledge or connect it to what they already know. The school should ensure that activities build pupils' knowledge securely, so that they gain a deeper understanding of each subject.
• Sometimes, staff do not check what pupils know and understand as effectively as they could. This means that gaps in knowledge are not consistently identified and then addressed quickly. Errors then persist in pupils' thinking and their written work. The school should ensure that it supports staff to check for understanding systematically and then adapt teaching to address any misconceptions.

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