Pillgwenlly C.P. School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Pupils at Pillgwenlly Primary School are polite, friendly, and caring. They are eager to learn, work with others effectively and enjoy taking on leadership roles.

They show a good awareness of important issues, such as equality, sustainability, and the importance of valuing others, but are not always clear about the importance of eating healthily. The school is a vibrant, multi-cultural learning environment that gives pupils a broad range of engaging learning experiences. This helps to ensure that pupils make effective progress in areas, such as their speaking and listening, and information and communication technology (ICT) skills.

However, pupils' progress in mathematics and writing is not as good. Alongside its multi-cu...ltural ethos, the school values its Welsh culture and language, incorporating it into the curriculum to develop pupils' understanding well. Teachers develop positive and supportive relationships with pupils and consider their ideas carefully when planning learning.

However, teachers do not always provide learning that challenges pupils to develop their skills well enough, nor provide pupils with helpful enough feedback to support their learning. The school provides effective support for pupils with additional learning needs (ALN), and for those with English as an additional language. A dedicated team assists teachers to identify pupils' individual needs and provide them with targeted help.

Pupils in the local authority's learning support class, and those in the school's own bespoke support classes are supported well and make good progress in their learning. While arrangements to keep pupils safe are suitable, the school does not have a strong enough safeguarding culture. There have been significant changes to the school's leadership in recent years.

Leaders have developed a clear vision for the school, based around their 'BRIDGE' curriculum and an approach to teaching that provides pupils with useful opportunities to develop their independence. However, leaders do not evaluate, or plan for improvements in, pupils' learning well enough. The school provides staff with useful professional learning opportunities.

However, a minority of staff do not feel part of the school's improvement journey. Recommendations R1 Address the issues relating to safeguarding identified at the time of the inspection R2 Sharpen evaluation and improvement processes so that they focus better, and impact more positively, on pupils' learning R3 Improve pupils' writing and their mathematical skills R4 Ensure that teachers provide pupils with challenging learning experiences more consistently and give them regular and helpful feedback on their learning What happens next The school will draw up an action plan to show how it is going to address the recommendations. Estyn will work with the local authority to review the school's progress.