The Thomas Coram Church of England School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 20 June 2023

Pupils happily attend this friendly school. Pupils have firm friendships and are supportive and kind to each other. This creates a positive atmosphere where pupils naturally rely on their friends. Pupils are articulate, respectful and are keen to share their opinions. They talk about their learning with enthusiasm. Pupils learn a broad, balanced and rich curriculum. They develop their interests and improve their language through the quality texts and interesting topics they study. Pupils achieve well. Most pupils behave well. Leaders act swiftly to address bullying. Pupils feel safe and are safe. A few pupils, however, have not been given the support they need to manage their behaviour well. They sometimes misbehave. This has reduced over the year. The school's new approach to managing behaviour reflects leaders' high expectations, and sets a higher bar for how pupils should behave. Pupils understand British values, including the importance of valuing others' differences. They show responsible attitudes towards their school jobs. They complete these without prompting and show a mature attitude towards undertaking tasks for the 'greater good'. This means pupils develop into well-rounded individuals. They are well prepared for the transition to secondary school.

What the school should improve

• The behaviour policy is new. A few pupils have not always had effective support during unstructured times. As a result, some pupils who find it harder to manage their behaviour have behaved inappropriately. While this has improved, leaders need to ensure all staff and pupils continue to understand and follow the new behaviour policy so that the much rarer instances of inappropriate behaviour reduce even further.
• In a few foundation subjects, leaders do not have accurate systems to monitor what pupils have learned in the long term. This means that leaders do not know which gaps in pupils' knowledge need to be filled and so cannot adapt what is taught precisely to meet these needs. Leaders need to ensure that they have systems in place to check pupils' understanding over time.
• Leaders have identified the adapted and scaffolded approaches that will support all pupils to learn at the same rate as their peers. However, these are not used consistently well in all subjects. This means that not all pupils make as much progress as possible because they cannot access the task to the same level as their peers. Leaders must ensure that planned for adapted approaches are effective and utilised in all subjects.

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