St Oswald’s VA School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

St Oswald's Voluntary Aided Primary School is a nurturing place for pupils, staff and visitors. All pupils and their families receive a sincere welcome.

Pupils enjoy coming to school and are proud to be a part of such a reassuring learning environment. Teachers and support staff are always there to help when needed. The headteacher, teachers and support staff take very good care of the pupils and want them to thrive in learning and in life.

Staff offer pupils a variety of school experiences, all of which help to keep pupils interested and make learning exciting. Many pupils make good progress and achieve well. In general, over direction by adults stifles opportunities for pupils to develop their independent learning skills... and limits their progress, especially pupils who are identified as being more able.

This includes when pupils lead and evaluate aspects of their own learning. The school grounds offer an engaging environment to extend pupils' learning and, at times, teachers plan stimulating outdoor learning activities. Adults provide regular feedback to pupils which enables pupils to correct their work.

However, feedback focuses too often on pupils correcting basic mistakes and does not support them to improve their work well enough. Pupils know that staff expect them to behave well and respect everyone in the school and the community. The engagement of pupils in their learning, and their excellent behaviour, are notable strengths of the school.

The headteacher provides strong and compassionate leadership and knows the school well. He plans a robust cycle of monitoring and evaluation and identifies important areas of the school's work that staff work hard to improve. The headteacher values the opinions of staff, pupils, parents and governors, and uses these to improve the school.

The headteacher is ably and enthusiastically supported by the acting deputy headteacher. Staff and senior leaders trust each other to form an effective, successful team. Recommendations R1 Address the health and safety issue raised during the inspection R2 Strengthen opportunities to develop pupils' independent learning skills including when using the outdoors R3 Develop feedback to support pupils to make progress in learning What happens next The school will draw up an action plan to address the recommendations from the inspection.