The New Leake Primary School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 17 December 2024

One parent told inspectors that 'This school is a little gem.' Inspectors agree. This is a safe, happy and cohesive school in which pupils are known, heard and understood. It is a small school with a big family feel. It is held in high regard by pupils, staff and the vast majority of parents and carers. The school's values make clear that everyone is expected to show respect, forgiveness, honesty, trust, kindness and fairness. All pupils are expected to achieve highly. They do their very best to live up to these high expectations. Pupils behave positively. The recently revised behaviour policy is working well. Pupils understand the three simple rules of 'be kind, be respectful and be safe'. They are eager to earn recognition and praise from staff. The stepped reminders, along with opportunities to reflect, help pupils understand the impact of any poor behaviour. Any pupils who struggle to live up to the school's expectations receive the help they need. As a result, they behave well. Pupils benefit from an exciting range of outdoor activities. Daily, they get to explore, take risks and develop cooperation and collaboration skills. They do this well. The impressive construction area is especially popular.

What the school should improve

• In some cases, teachers do not have high-enough expectations of pupils' written work. As a result, there are some inconsistencies in pupils' use of grammar, spelling, punctuation and handwriting. The school should ensure that its expectations of pupils' written work are consistently understood and applied.
• Teachers, on occasion, can cover too much subject matter in a short amount of time. They do not focus closely enough on what the curriculum says pupils should learn. As a result, pupils do not always learn the curriculum as well as they could. The school should ensure that teachers focus closely on the intent that is contained in the curriculum and that this consistently results in pupils knowing and remembering content.
• In some subjects, arrangements for assessing how well pupils learn and remember curriculum content are at an early stage of development. This means that the school does not have a fully rounded view of how pupils achieve across all subjects. The school should ensure that it has consistent assessment procedures in place to check on how successfully pupils acquire knowledge across all subjects.

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