Birch Copse Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

The school has improved considerably since its previous inspection and provides its pupils with an outstanding quality of education. All of the strengths identified in the previous inspection report have been sustained and many aspects considerably improved.

This is reflected in the exceptionally strong relationship between home and school and high levels of satisfaction expressed by parents and carers. Pupils' results in the Year 6 national tests in English and mathematics continue to be significantly higher than the national average. The school's thorough approaches to tracking its performance show that progress for most pupils is at least good, while those with special needs and/or disabilities mak...e excellent gains from their starting points.

Pupils' achievement is outstanding. Highly effective arrangements for care, guidance and support and outstanding partnerships underpin pupils' well-being and all-round development. Their enjoyment of school is reflected in high levels of attendance, positive response in lessons and excellent behaviour.

Pupils are proud of their school community and make a significant contribution to its development. The reason for the school's sustained performance lies in the consistently good quality of most teaching and an outstanding curriculum. Teachers ensure that pupils enjoy their work by making creative and coherent links between the subjects of the National Curriculum.

Learning is enriched through the excellent use of theme days, educational visits and a host of effective partnership activities. Lessons progress at a brisk pace and pupils say their learning is enlivened by interesting tasks and challenging activities. The skilled work of teaching assistants and appropriate modification of resources to support those with special educational needs are central to the excellent progress made by these pupils.

Though the core of teaching is good, not enough is outstanding to accelerate progress still further. In English and mathematics, teachers make skilled use of assessment information to ensure a close match of task to pupils' abilities. This is not yet a consistent feature in the other subjects of the National Curriculum.

The leadership team has correctly identified the need to improve provision in the Early Years Foundation Stage. A new teaching team has improved the learning environment and ensures the children are happy, safe and achieving well. However, the quality of adults' questioning is not always sharp enough to extend children's learning, and assessments, while accurate, do not consistently identify the next steps children need to take to reach the higher levels.

The reason for the school's success lies in the outstanding work of the leadership team and the decisive actions taken to drive improvement. Individual pupil progress is tracked with rigour and staff are held to account for the performance of their pupils at regular meetings about progress. Samples of pupils' work are checked and lessons monitored.

The results of these activities support rigorous self-evaluation, which is used to inform an ambitious, but realistic, school improvement plan. Sustained high attainment, improved achievement, provision and the successful development of middle leadership are all compelling examples of the school's outstanding capacity to improve.

Information about the school

The school is larger than average.

About half of the pupils come from the immediate catchment area, the remainder from further afield. The great majority of pupils are White British. Other groups include Mixed White and Black Caribbean and Mixed White and Asian.

No pupils are at the early stages of learning English. The proportion of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals has doubled in recent years but remains much lower than the national average. The proportion of pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities is below average.

This group includes a number of pupils with autistic spectrum disorder and physical disabilities such as visual impairment. Since the previous inspection a new headteacher and leadership team have been appointed. There is a new staff team in the Early Years Foundation Stage.

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