South View Infant and Nursery School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 4 June 2024

Happy pupils enjoy their time at South View. Committed staff provide pupils with personal development that focuses on instilling a belief that pupils can do it. Staff form highly effective relationships with pupils. They work with parents to ensure pupils can manage basic health and self-care and that pupils attend regularly. Pupils learn across a varied and interesting curriculum. However, too many are not learning the core skills of literacy and numeracy quickly enough. This is making it harder for pupils to be ready for different academic stages of their education and achieve successfully. High behaviour expectations are underpinned by the 'bee' rules, which pupils avidly follow. From the start of Nursery, children are taught how to behave, sit sensibly and manage their emotions. The school's rewards system motivates pupils to work hard and be kind to each other. Pupils are very accepting of others. When they welcome visitors, they are polite and eager to shake hands. The school places great importance on pupils' physical development and healthy lifestyles. The popular allotment teaches pupils to grow healthy foods. Extensive opportunities in the curriculum provide pupils with vital experiences outside of school. These provide pupils with wonderful memories, a sense of belonging and crucial life skills.

What the school should improve

• Some staff lack expertise in knowing how best to deliver an ambitious and coherently planned phonics programme. Furthermore, pupils are not always reading books that closely align with their reading development. This means pupils are not learning to read as quickly as the school intends. The school now needs to implement its new phonics programme and ensure that all staff are expertly trained to teach this consistently well.
• Pupils' knowledge and skills in writing are still developing. Many pupils are not yet writing to the year group expectations of the national curriculum. The school should continue its focus in helping pupils to acquire the building blocks of early writing to increase their success across the curriculum.
• Sometimes, staff select activities that do not enable pupils to develop more detailed knowledge. This impacts on how deeply pupils learn in different subjects. The school should provide further professional development to support staff's knowledge and expertise in curriculum implementation.

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