West Street Community Primary School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 1 April 2025

The school is a calm and welcoming place. Staff know pupils well. Pupils are confident that staff will help them with any worries that they may have. The school provides effective support for pupils to become independent and resilient. This begins in the early years, where children settle quickly and learn to follow the school's well-established routines. Most pupils enjoy school. They behave well. Pupils particularly value the firm friendships that they develop with each other. They look forward to social times together. Pupils are considerate of others when learning, playing, and moving around the school. Pupils respond well to opportunities for developing leadership skills. They help others willingly. For example, the school council is active within the Colne junior council, taking part in projects such as reducing child food poverty in the local community. The school has high ambitions for pupils' achievement. However, its aspirations are only partially met. Pupils' achievement is variable across the school, including in reading and mathematics. As a result, some pupils are not as well prepared for their next stages of education as they should be. This includes those pupils who will be moving on to secondary education at the end of the academic year.

What the school should improve

• At times, the school does not make the most effective use of the information it has about pupils to identify what it most needs to focus on. This means that, sometimes, the most pressing issues, including rates of absence, pupils' achievement and how well the needs of pupils with SEND are understood and met, are not addressed as efficiently or as effectively as they could be. This impacts on pupils' achievement as well as staff's workload. It hinders governors from ensuring that their support and challenge are targeted accurately. The school should sharpen its focus on accurately identifying and addressing key school improvement priorities.
• Some pupils have misconceptions or gaps in their knowledge, including in reading and mathematics. This means that these pupils are not as well prepared for their next stages of education as they should be. The school should make sure that pupils have secured the necessary prior knowledge to be fully prepared for their next stages of education.
• The school does not make sure that children in the early years receive the support that they need to practise and embed their learning across the curriculum consistently well. Consequently, they do not build up their knowledge as successfully as they could. This is particularly true for children's understanding of how to produce correctly formed letters and numbers. The school should ensure that children in the early years are fully prepared for their learning in Year 1 and beyond.
• The identification of the needs of pupils with SEND is not consistently accurate or timely. This makes it more difficult for teachers to provide the most appropriate support for these pupils. The school should ensure that its systems and processes for identifying pupils' needs and overseeing the support for these pupils are working effectively. How can I feedback my views? You can use Ofsted Parent View to give Ofsted your opinion on your child's school, or to find out what other parents and carers think. We use information from Ofsted Parent View when deciding which schools to inspect, when to inspect them and as part of their inspection. The Department for Education has further guidance on how to complain about a school.

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