Lime Academy Watergall

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 9 July 2024

The school is ambitious for pupils to achieve well. Children get off to a good start in the early years. They demonstrate positive attitudes to learning and make a strong start. However, the quality of education that pupils receive beyond early years is not yet good enough. Pupils are not yet consistently benefiting from the school's revised curriculum. Consequently, pupils do not always achieve well. Many pupils behave well. However, in some lessons, pupils lose focus and find it difficult to sustain concentration. Sometimes pupils' behaviour is disruptive and affects the learning of others. Pupils can play well with each other outside. Occasionally, however, pupils are upset when their peers do hurtful or unkind things. Pupils' social and emotional needs are supported well by the school. The pastoral team offer support and advice to pupils and their families. This supports pupils' readiness to learn. Pupils attend well. Pupils are encouraged to develop their interests through a wide range of clubs. Pupil's aspirations are raised through carefully planned opportunities. An example of this is the work done with the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Residential trips develop pupils' independence and resilience. Pupils value these different opportunities to broaden their horizons.

What the school should improve

• Although leaders have high expectations of pupils' behaviour, these are not applied consistently by staff. As a result, the learning of others can be disrupted, and some pupils display unkind behaviours. The school needs to further train and support staff in implementing their behaviour curriculum so there is a consistency to managing behaviour in class and at unstructured times.
• There are some inconsistencies in the effectiveness of teaching across the school. This means pupils do not always learn as effectively as they could. The school needs to continue to further develop and embed its support and training for staff to ensure a consistency of approach and effectiveness of teaching and learning across the school.
• Pupils' writing across the curriculum is not always as good as it should be. Errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar often go unchecked. This means pupils do not always communicate their learning in their writing as well as they should. The school should ensure that staff have consistent expectations of, and approaches to, the teaching of writing across all subjects so that pupils improve the quality of their writing across the curriculum.

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