Halewood Church of England Primary Academy

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 25 April 2023

Pupils are proud to be a member of this school. They love to learn. Staff care for them exceptionally well. They are safe and very happy. Pupils' sense of responsibility is strong. For example, older pupils run lunchtime clubs such as chess, serve on pupil voice councils and act as a 'buddy' to younger children. Pupils take their duties seriously. They carry them out with pride. Pupils take full advantage of the very broad range of extra-curricular opportunities on offer. They take part in many of these opportunities through the 'Halewood university', which is particularly well attended. They expand their horizons further through trips, including to the theatre, and residential stays. Many pupils excel in sport. They take their preparations for local sporting competitions seriously and regularly experience success. Leaders are very ambitious for what pupils will learn in reading, writing and mathematics. In these subjects, pupils achieve exceptionally well. Although pupils do not reach the same exceptional high standards across the curriculum, they still achieve well in other subjects. Staff have high expectations of pupils' behaviour. Pupils conduct themselves extremely well. They have excellent relationships with their classmates, which means that fall outs are very rare. Leaders act quickly to address any bullying concerns as soon as they arise.

What the school should improve

• In some subjects, leaders have not precisely identified the component knowledge that pupils need to learn from the early years onwards. They have also not identified when teachers will teach this knowledge or how they will check that pupils have acquired it. This leads to pupils not building on prior learning as securely as they could in some foundation subjects. Leaders should provide teachers with robust guidance so that they can teach subject curriculums in a logical order and check that pupils have acquired and remembered essential knowledge.
• Leaders' oversight of curriculum implementation is not as strong in some subjects as it is in others. This means that some leaders do not identify or address weaknesses in the design and implementation of the curriculum from the Nursery Year to Year 6. At times, this hinders pupils from achieving consistently well across the curriculum. Leaders should review their approaches to evaluating subject curriculums and how well teachers implement them.

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