St Mary's Church of England Academy

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 22 May 2024

At St Mary's, pupils are happy. At lunchtimes, they enjoy activities such as dancing, collecting snails and playing sports together. They chat and interact in a friendly way. Pupils are confident that staff will listen to them and help them sort things out. This helps keep pupils safe. Pupils are now very clear about how to behave. They know and follow the new school rules. Those pupils who need it get lots of extra support to manage their emotions. This includes being able to spend time in 'The Nest', where they can undertake calming activities such as Lego. Pupils have experienced recent improvements in what they learn. They now study a full range of subjects. They benefit from a clear approach to learning to read. However, all of this is relatively new. Many pupils have not built up strong and secure subject knowledge or learned to read well enough. There are many opportunities for pupils to pursue their interests. Pupils who are part of the eco-council have raised lots of money for charity by recycling. They have worked to make the school environmentally friendly and have learned all about how to be responsible global citizens.

What the school should improve

• The school has not ensured that all pupils can read fluently enough. As a result, younger pupils in particular make too many mistakes with decoding and blending words. This is because they have not secured their knowledge of how to use phonics well enough. The school needs to ensure that it provides further guidance and support for staff to teach the phonics programme effectively, so that pupils can decode and blend with confidence and read with age-appropriate levels of fluency.
• In some subjects, teachers do not routinely check what pupils know and then use this information to plan learning that builds on pupils' prior knowledge effectively. As a result, particularly in the foundation subjects, pupils do not secure or retain important knowledge as well as they should. The school needs to ensure that teachers carefully check what pupils know and then use this information to plan and adapt learning to build pupils' subject knowledge effectively.
• Trustees have not challenged with enough rigour and precision to have full awareness of the extent of the issues the school faced. As a result, the quality of education at the school has declined, because trustees have not dealt quickly and effectively enough with issues where they have existed. Trustees need to ensure they use a range of information so that they have a clear and accurate picture of the quality of education at the school and can use this to challenge and support school leaders to bring about necessary improvements.

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