St Bede's Catholic Primary School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 11 February 2025

Pupils enjoy attending this welcoming school. They forge positive relationships with their peers and with staff. Pupils are polite and respectful as they interact with each other. They typically live up to the school's high expectations of their behaviour. There is a calm and purposeful atmosphere around the school. Pupils work hard in lessons and listen carefully to staff. Children in the early years are eager to engage in activities and demonstrate high levels of concentration in their learning. The school is ambitious for its pupils, however, pupils have not always achieved as well as the school would like. Over the past few years, the school has made considerable changes to its curriculum to improve pupils' learning across all subjects. However, many of these changes are at an early stage of development. This means that there is currently variability in how well pupils' knowledge develops across subjects. Pupils have many opportunities to contribute to the school and to the wider community. For example, they spoke about planting trees and taking part in recycling initiatives through their roles as 'eco-warriors'. Pupils develop their interests and talents through attending a wide range of activities after school. These include choir, art and a variety of sports clubs.

What the school should improve

• Many of the school's subject curriculums are new and are still being developed to ensure that the essential knowledge is clearly and precisely defined. This makes it difficult for the school to ensure that pupils' knowledge develops securely in some of these subjects. The school should refine the curriculum, so that pupils develop the depth of knowledge they need across all subjects to be well prepared for the next stage in their education.
• In subjects where the essential knowledge is not clearly defined, teachers struggle to make effective activity choices to support pupils to deepen their knowledge. This hinders how well pupils learn the curriculum. The school should ensure that teachers choose activities that enable pupils to build on their knowledge consistently over time.
• In some subjects, the school's assessment systems are not as effective as they could be in checking how well pupils have learned the curriculum. This makes it difficult for the school to evaluate the impact of the curriculums on pupils' learning. The school should ensure that assessment strategies in all subjects enable staff to identify how securely pupils are learning, so that there are no gaps in their knowledge and they are ready for the next stage of their learning.

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