Toll Bar Primary School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 1 July 2025

There are strong relationships between staff and pupils at this caring school. If pupils are worried about something, they know that staff will support them. Parents and carers appreciate the way in which staff go the extra mile to make sure that their children are happy. Pupils are safe and they enjoy attending school. They are polite and friendly. Behaviour around the school is calm and respectful. Bullying happens rarely. If it does, it is addressed and resolved quickly. While leaders have high expectations for pupils' achievement, these are not consistently realised. Too many pupils do not achieve as well as they should. The school recognises this and there are clearly identified priority areas for rapid improvement. However, many improvement strategies are in their infancy, and the impact of these is limited at this stage. Pupils benefit from a wide range of enrichment opportunities. These include sports clubs, music clubs, a cooking club and residential trips. A number of pupils also volunteer to work with the 'One O'Clock Club', a group of residents who work with the school to improve the local community. This includes opportunities for pupils to plant flowers in the local area and to organise litter picking.

What the school should improve

• Some activities in lessons are not well matched to the intended learning of the curriculum. This means that pupils do not develop and deepen their learning as well as they should. The school should ensure that staff use lesson activities which fully support pupils' learning.
• Staff do not check that pupils have understood the most important learning before moving on to new content consistently. This means that there are gaps in some pupils' knowledge, and they are not able to learn the curriculum effectively. The school should ensure that the curriculum is implemented consistently well and that pupils build their knowledge strongly over time.
• As a result of inconsistent implementation of the curriculum, pupils' knowledge of British values, world faiths and beliefs is not fully developed. This means that they are not as prepared for life in modern Britain as they could be. The school should ensure that its teaching of these areas is effective and that pupils understand thoroughly what they have been taught.
• Some changes that the school has implemented, including those relating to the curriculum, are relatively recent and are still becoming established. This means that the impact of these changes in some areas is limited and not fully realised. The school should ensure that improvement strategies are timely and effective in realising the ambition of providing high-quality education to all pupils.

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