Pupils, staff and governors at a small Catholic primary school are celebrating following a recent Ofsted report where they received ‘good’ across the board, with some outstanding features.
The school, St Winefride’s on Mellock Lane, Little Neston, has improved from a previous ‘satisfactory’ finding in 2012.
The inspector’s report is said to praises the good teaching at the school with all pupils making at least ‘good’ progress.
There is a high expectation of behaviour, which is evident throughout the school, good governance and ‘strong resolve’ by head teacher Dawn Ormes to continue the drive for improvement, as well as a ‘clear vision’ about what needs to be done to build upon the achievements of the school to date.
The inspectors found the quality of teaching in all classes to be consistently ‘at least good’ and on occasion, outstanding.
They believe children get off to a good start in the early years stage and make good progress leaving St Winefride’s at the end of year 6 with attainment above the national average.
Teachers make learning interesting and stimulating with great opportunities for pupils to practise their skills in reading, writing and mathematics in other subject areas.
The children’s reading and writing is described as being of a high standard throughout the school.
The inspectors remarked upon how confident and articulate the children are, says the school and pupils enjoyed speaking with the inspectors.
Keeping pupils safe and secure was judged as ‘outstanding’ and the inspectors found ‘an air of calm and friendliness permeates the whole school.’
All areas for improvement from the last inspection had been addressed robustly and parents would recommend the school to others.
Inspectors commented, however, that at times teachers did not ensure pupils got as much work out of lessons as they could.
And they did not always check that children followed up the advice they were given about how to improve their work.
It was noted the school had had ‘particular success’ in reducing the number of pupils taking holidays in term time.
The only area in which the report suggested the school could progress further was to improve the ‘already good quality teaching’ to outstanding across the board.
The headteacher said: “I am delighted that the hard work of all of the children and staff at our school has been acknowledged by Ofsted resulting in an excellent report.
“The inspectors recognised that, despite being labelled a ‘good’ school, our school was also found to be an improving school.
“I feel that this is a true reflection of our school community and we will continue to build upon our successes.”
