St Mary’s & St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

St Mary's and St Patrick's Catholic Primary School provides a caring and inclusive environment for its pupils, which encourages them to learn, be happy and enjoy school life.

Pupils participate willingly in the activities provided for them and use resources productively to improve their knowledge and understanding across the curriculum. The purposeful working relationships that exist with most of their teachers and other staff support the school's vision of 'Learning Together' successfully. Overall, the school environment promotes beneficial learning opportunities.

Learning is particularly successful where the teaching is purposeful and challenges pupils to perform at their best. However, the quality of teaching is inconsi...stent and the quality of teachers' feedback to pupils does not help them to improve their work effectively. Most staff provide strong support, care and guidance for pupils in all aspects of school life.

This motivates pupils to focus on their individual learning and well-being. They are keen to learn and they are ambitious and capable learners. As a result, pupils' behaviour is exemplary.

Pupils develop good literacy skills, which includes writing in extended forms effectively. They also develop appropriate digital skills and their numeracy skills across the curriculum are satisfactory. Staff make the best use of the school grounds to provide engaging learning experiences in the outdoors for pupils.

Leaders evaluate the school's work to plan for improvements well. The new headteacher provides effective leadership. The senior leadership team, most of the staff and the governors share her clear vision, and they work together cohesively to ensure that the school improves.

Recent changes to monitoring and evaluation processes highlight the headteacher's determination to ensure success for the pupils and the community. The new monitoring practices and improvement plans align well to relevant training opportunities for staff to develop their skills, through purposeful professional learning courses. Recommendations R1 Address the site safety issue, identified at the time of inspection R2 Ensure that the new leadership practices improve the consistency and effectiveness of teaching across the school R3 Provide effective opportunities for pupils to apply their numeracy and digital competency skills across the curriculum R4 Ensure that the quality of teachers' feedback targets the next steps in pupils' learning effectively What happens next The school will draw up an action plan to address the recommendations from the inspection.