Castle Park Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Castle Park Primary school is a well-led, welcoming place to learn.

The headteacher leads a team of teachers and teaching assistants committed to improving all aspects of school life. They work hard to maintain positive relationships between staff and pupils and extend these relationships to form trusting and supportive relationships between school and home. Most pupils enjoy school.

They feel safe and listened to and this is reflected in the views of parents who are full of praise for the dedicated staff. Throughout the school, most pupils behave well, engage positively with the wide range of learning experiences and make good progress in their learning. They enjoy exciting opportunities to learn about the world of work f...rom a wide range of people from varied backgrounds who share their skills, talents and career journeys.

As a result, pupils develop the confidence and skills to express themselves articulately, share their ideas and justify their decision-making. Across the school, pupils develop positive attitudes to reading and writing and enjoy the many opportunities to be physically active. They use digital devices effectively to support their learning and to produce reports, presentations, graphs and designs.

They develop good mathematical skills and knowledge but do not use these skills often enough in their work across the curriculum. Teachers work with their pupils to plan learning experiences that engage them and capture their interests. Many of these experiences allow pupils to explore the issues which affect them and others such as equity and sustainability.

From a young age, pupils are keen to do well and to take on new challenges. However, pupils do not generally have enough influence over their own learning and in a few lessons, a minority of pupils do not make the progress they are capable of. Teachers use a range of strategies, such as effective questioning and immediate feedback to enhance learning.

Many teachers plan sequences of lessons that support pupils to build their skills progressively in many aspects of their learning. However, teachers' planning for progression across a few aspects of the school curriculum such as in Welsh and the expressive arts is under-developed. Recommendations R1 Further develop assessment for learning to better support pupils to understand the purpose of their learning and the progress they make R2 Improve pupils' Welsh language skills across the school What happens next The school will draw up an action plan to address the recommendations from the inspection.