St Mary's CofE (VA) Primary School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 11 March 2025

Pupils are happy at St Mary's CofE Primary. This is because this is a school where adults work hard to ensure pupils are made to feel welcome. This helps pupils to feel secure and ready to learn. This welcome starts with the breakfast club, where pupils can talk to an adult as well as enjoy nourishing food. As one pupil summarised, 'St Mary's is a safe and friendly place where they give you support.' Pupils behave with high levels of respect and consideration for each other, both in lessons and at social times. They understand the school's values of respect, forgiveness and generosity. For example, pupils can explain what the school's values mean in how they conduct themselves and how they should be treated. Pupils speak highly of the leadership opportunities they have and how they help in the school. Pupils enjoy the many animals that the school has and the work they do to look after them. The school has high expectations for pupils' achievement. It is achieving these with increasing consistency. This means pupils are motivated to achieve well, and adults work with increasing coherence to support them in this.

What the school should improve

• On occasion, staff do not check if pupils have a secure understanding of their learning. When this is the case, gaps in learning can occur. The school should ensure that teachers have the subject knowledge across the curriculum to use assessment effectively to identify gaps in pupils' knowledge, and adaptations are put in place to close the gaps.
• In some lessons, teachers are not using the information provided by the school to adapt learning activities to the needs of pupils with SEND, or the support provided does not enable pupils to work with appropriate independence. This means that these pupils do not learn the curriculum as well as they could. The school should ensure that teachers understand how to adapt activities for pupils with SEND such that they acquire and practise their knowledge and skills at an appropriate level and with greater independence.
• The school's evaluation of its work in some subjects is at an earlier stage of development. This means that there are pockets of inconsistency as the subject vision is not systematically in place. The school should ensure that subject leads regularly review and lead on the development of their areas of responsibility, such that best practice continues to be spread through the school.

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