Mulberry Baird Primary

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 12 June 2024

All pupils and their families are assured of a warm welcome at The Baird. Many pupils join the school at different stages of their education and at different times of the year. Each pupil's unique circumstances and needs are considered and responded to. This is a profoundly inclusive school. However, pupils' low attendance means that exciting opportunities to learn are missed too often. Right from the start in Nursery and Reception, children develop positive relationships with adults and their peers. Pupils understand that staff are there to help them develop skills for life, as well as to learn the academic curriculum. There is a happy atmosphere throughout the school as pupils play and learn together. Staff set clear expectations. Through 'coaching conversations', adults help pupils to develop strategies to manage their own behaviour successfully. Pupils generally rise to expectations and focus on their learning. Pupils benefit from extensive opportunities for new experiences to develop ambition and learn about staying safe in the wider world. The school's motto of 'everyone safe, everyone learning, everyone empowered in school' is brought to life daily. However, standards being achieved, especially in writing, are not supporting pupils to be prepared well for transition to secondary school.

What the school should improve

• Whole-school absence is high. Consequently, too many pupils do not benefit as well as they could from the learning and wider opportunities offered by the school. The school should persist in its extensive endeavours, including its engagement with other services to continue to improve attendance further.
• Standards in writing are too low. This means that pupils are not prepared well for their next steps in education. The school should ensure that across all year groups, teachers accurately understand what constitutes writing at the expected standard and greater depth in order that the curriculum builds, and pupils learn, in coherent steps towards known, ambitious end points. In addition, raised expectations for writing as part of the English curriculum should be replicated across the curriculum so that pupils practise and extend their writing skills more effectively.
• The quality of pupils' learning varies too widely. The reviewed curriculum is at different stages of implementation. In some subjects, expectations of what pupils will learn, particularly the most-able pupils, are not sufficiently high. The school should ensure the planned curriculum improvements are fully implemented and that ambitious intended outcomes are clearly defined and understood by staff so that teaching enables all pupils to make good progress across the curriculum.

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