Herne Bay Junior School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 17 June 2025

The vast majority of pupils align to the school's high expectations to 'be respectful, be responsible and be ready'. They build positive relationships with staff and their peers and are respectful of different cultures and religions. Pupils are keen to show their responsibility by taking on leadership roles, such as art ambassadors, sports leaders, house captains and play leaders. Most pupils have positive attitudes to their education and attend school happily, ready to learn. Those who find school more challenging are well supported through the 'thrive room' and early morning sports club, which help them to make a more purposeful and settled start to the day. These initiatives have had a positive impact on the attendance and punctuality of a number of pupils. However, some pupils continue to miss valuable learning time by arriving to school late. Pupils feel safe in their school and know they can always talk to a trusted adult. Pupils are aware that poor behaviour sometimes happens in the school, but they are confident that staff deal with this swiftly to reduce any impact on their learning or play. Despite the school's high ambitions, not all pupils achieve as well as they could in their learning across the curriculum.

What the school should improve

• Leaders and governors do not have sufficient expertise around some areas of safeguarding. This means that the curriculum is sometimes not as preventative as it could be and pupils may not receive well matched and timely interventions that could reduce their risk of future harm. The school should ensure that leaders have the expertise to identify all risks fully and to consider these risks thoroughly in the curriculum.
• The school's checks on pupils' learning do not focus on how securely pupils have understood the intended learning. Misconceptions and gaps in learning are sometimes missed. Not all pupils achieve as well as they could. The school should ensure that staff have the expertise and resources needed to focus their teaching more sharply on the intended learning.
• Some phonics teaching lacks the necessary expertise to support pupils in the earlier stages of reading. Where this is the case, pupils do not decode words accurately, which can slow down their reading progress and fluency. The school should ensure that staff have the expertise to teach phonics accurately.
• Some incidents of poor behaviour, including the use of discriminatory language, are not addressed as effectively as they could be. Some patterns of poor behaviour continue. Leaders should ensure that incidents of poor behaviour are swiftly identified.
• Leaders, including those with responsibility for governance, do not have a sufficiently clear oversight of the areas of the curriculum that need to be improved and the impact that the curriculum is having. As a result, curriculum ambitions are not being consistently fulfilled, and not all pupils are achieving as highly as they could. Leaders should ensure that they review the impact of their work to embed the curriculum as intended so that necessary improvements happen in a timely manner.

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