Birches First School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Key findings

This is an outstanding school.

Pupils and their parents and carers are overwhelmingly positive in their praise for the school. One parent, representing the views of many, wrote, 'I am exceptionally happy with Birches. When I leave my children, I know that they will be educated to the highest level by staff who genuinely care.'

From starting points in line with age-related expectations on entry to the Early Years Foundation Stage, all groups of pupils achieve exceptionally well and by the end of Year 4, pupils' attainment is well above national expectations in reading, writing and mathematics. Strong and trusting relationships underpin pupils' exemplary behaviour, which makes a strong contribu...tion to their learning and to the smooth running of the safe school environment. Interesting and well-planned curricular experiences promote their learning and spiritual, moral, social and cultural development extremely well.

Teaching is outstanding and ensures that pupils make rapid progress. All teachers have an excellent understanding of pupils' needs and challenge them to do as well as they can. Teachers concentrate on ensuring that every pupil, including disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs, makes at least good and often excellent progress.

Led by a highly effective headteacher, the school is relentless in its drive to constantly improve the quality of teaching. Rigorous monitoring of pupils' progress enables the school to identify those pupils who are not on course to meet their challenging targets and provide support to accelerate their progress. Focused support has helped pupils to catch up and accelerate their progress in reading and writing but it was less successful in mathematics for a very small number of pupils in 2011.

This was partly because the school does not always include measures against which to evaluate the success of support programmes.

Information about the school

Most pupils at this smaller than average primary school are from White British backgrounds. A small proportion are from minority ethnic backgrounds and very few are learning English as an additional language.

The proportion of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs is below average, as is the proportion of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals. The school has numerous awards, including National Healthy Schools, Eco-Schools Green Flag, Arts Mark Gold and Basic Skills Quality Mark and Dyslexia Friendly and Investors in People status. There have been three new members of the teaching staff since the previous inspection.