Fittleworth CofE Village School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 13 May 2025

Pupils are safe and happy at this caring school. Pupils know the school's values of perseverance, responsibility, independence, determination and effort, well. They enjoy the school's emphasis on outdoor learning and connection with nature and the wider world. Pupils value their roles and responsibilities highly, such as feeding the school chickens or acting as school councillors. The school promotes a strong focus on creating responsible and active pupils. Staff have high expectations for pupils' behaviour. Pupils are kind and respectful towards staff and each other. If pupils present challenging behaviour, the school adopts sensitive approaches that maintain a calm, purposeful learning environment. Pupils experience a wide range of extra-curricular experiences, including residential trips and regular collaboration with other schools. This helps pupils to develop confidence and readiness for their next stage of education. In some core and wider curriculum subjects, pupils do not learn the curriculum well. Pupils have gaps in their knowledge that are not addressed as consistently and effectively as they should be. This is reflected in the low published outcomes achieved in recent years. However, the school has identified this and has begun to implement improvements, such as ensuring that pupils at the earliest stages of reading are learning well.

What the school should improve

• Some aspects of the writing curriculum, such as the school's focus on spelling, punctuation and grammar, do not have a strong enough impact on pupils' learning. As a result, too many pupils do not achieve as well as they should by the end of key stage 2. The school should ensure that teaching strategies to support pupils with their writing build pupils' knowledge and understanding consistently and effectively.
• In the wider curriculum, checks to evaluate what pupils know and can do are not as effective as they should be. Sometimes, pupils do not understand core knowledge securely before new curriculum content is introduced. The school should ensure that staff identify and resolve errors and misconceptions in pupils' understanding. In doing so, this will help pupils to build their learning more securely over time.
• In some subjects, some activity choices do not help children learn the intended curriculum as effectively as they should. This means that some pupils are not learning securely and building their knowledge and understanding over time. The school should ensure that the staff receive effective training and monitoring so that the curriculum is implemented effectively and consistently well across all subjects.
• Beyond Reception Year there is an inconsistent approach to the teaching of phonics. This means that by the end of key stage 2 some pupils are not becoming as accurate and fluent readers as well as they should. The school needs to build on the early years provision and ensure consistency and accuracy in the implementation of the phonics programme so that pupils become confident readers who are well prepared for their next stage of education.

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