Wild Bank Primary School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 18 June 2024

Wild Bank School is a happy place to be. Children settle well in the early years, where they make friends easily. All pupils are welcomed by nurturing staff. Pupils are valued as individuals. They enjoy strong relationships with each other and with adults in the school. Pupils are starting to respond to the higher aspirations that the school has set for their learning. However, many aspects of the curriculum have only been introduced recently. Pupils currently have gaps in their prior learning. This is preventing them from achieving as well as they should. Pupils take part in some extra-curricular activities. These include art, construction and sports clubs. They proudly represent their school in competitions. Pupils value the help that they receive to help them manage their social skills and their emotional and mental health. This includes support from the school dog, Odie, who is a key part of the Wild Bank family. Pupils behave well and have positive attitudes to their learning.

What the school should improve

• The school has not defined the essential curriculum knowledge that they want pupils to learn and remember in many subjects, including PSHE. This means that teachers are unclear about what to teach and the order in which they should teach subject content. This hampers pupils from building their knowledge securely over time. The school should ensure that subject curriculums, and the programme for PSHE, are more specific about what pupils should learn so that teachers are better equipped to help pupils develop a secure body of knowledge.
• Teachers' checks on pupils' learning in key stages 1 and 2 are not effective enough. This means that the gaps in pupils' learning, caused by weaknesses in the previous curriculum, are not resolved. This makes it difficult for pupils to benefit from the new curriculums. It hinders their achievement. The school should ensure that teachers have the expertise to check and then address the gaps in pupils' prior learning so that they can progress well through the subject curriculums.
• Some pupils with SEND do not receive the support that they need to access learning. This limits their chance to benefit from the new subject curriculums as well as they should. The school should ensure that teachers adapt their delivery of the curriculum more effectively so that pupils with SEND can learn all that they should.
• The support for some pupils in the early stages of learning to read does not enable them to catch up quickly enough with the phonics programme. This means that these pupils do not read words as well as they should. The school should ensure that these pupils are helped to develop their reading knowledge so that they are able to read with increasing fluency and confidence.

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