St Gabriel's CofE Primary School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 10 December 2024

Pupils are rightly proud to attend this happy and welcoming school. They understand what it means to be successful and demonstrate positive attitudes towards their learning. Staff build warm relationships with pupils, ensuring that they learn in a calm and nurturing environment. This begins in the newly joined pre-school, where children settle well and form secure relationships. Pupils learn well through an ambitious curriculum that integrates 'academic excellence, character development, and metacognition'. This curriculum sets high expectations for what pupils can achieve across these three areas. Pupils embrace the school's ambition, understanding that there are no limits to what they can achieve, both in school and beyond. The school brings its vision of 'Communicating strength; inspiring our community to flourish' to life by supporting pupils and their families in a variety of meaningful ways. For example, pupils take the lead in the 'reverse advent', promoting care for others in the community through donations to the foodbank. These leadership roles instil pride in pupils, who value making a difference. The school ambitiously broadens opportunities through numerous experiences pupils may not otherwise have. All pupils benefit from this, including the most disadvantaged. They talk enthusiastically about how these experiences enhance their knowledge of the wider world.

What the school should improve

• On a small number of occasions, the checks the school makes on how well pupils are learning the curriculum do not fully identify and address the misconceptions that some pupils have. As a result, these pupils make repeated errors in their learning that go unaddressed. The trust needs to ensure that checks on pupils' learning are precise and that staff address any misconceptions identified to help pupils to build their knowledge securely.
• The intensive support in place to help pupils with challenging behaviour has not yet led to a reduction in the number of pupil suspensions. As a result, these remain high. The trust must further embed the systems and support for managing the most challenging behaviour. It must also ensure that pupil suspensions continue to reduce and that these pupils get all the help they need to show positive learning behaviours.

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