Congratulations to all at the school in Ryde that Ofsted found to be ‘Good’ in their recent Ofsted inspection.
The inspection took place at the end of September and today’s release of the report reveals that the school scored very well in several areas.
- The very caring and supportive ethos of the school helps pupils to thrive. This is especially effective in helping those pupils at risk of underachieving to do well.
- Pupils’ achievement is good and, despite entering the school with well below average literacy and numeracy skills, most reach the levels expected for their age in English and mathematics by Year 6.
- Spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is a strength. As a result, behaviour is good and pupils get on well together and enjoy school. The behaviour of pupils who find good behaviour difficult improves very well over time.
- Pupils are well taught. A real strength is teachers’ ability to focus on individual needs. The use of pupils’ targets to help them improve and the marking of their work are very good.
- Disabled pupils, those with special educational needs and pupils in receipt of pupil premium are enabled to learn successfully and the gap in achievement with their peers is closing rapidly.
- The headteacher is a very strong leader, and is especially good at developing the skills of other senior staff. Consequently self-evaluation and development planning are helping drive forward improvement in the quality of teaching and pupils’ achievement.
- The governing body checks the school’s work closely, including teaching and pupils’ progress. Governors support and challenge the school well.
To become and ‘Outstanding’ school, the following items would need to improve
- The proportion of pupils attaining levels above those expected for their age is rising, but is still below the national average in writing and mathematics and in reading for Year 2 pupils.
- Although teaching is generally good, not all teachers are well skilled at helping pupils to become independent learners and sometimes questioning does not reinforce key learning points.
Words from Head
The headteacher, Mrs Laura Bosworth, stated that the success of the school was about teamwork and courage:
“We have achieved our success by focusing on the children, by being courageous enough to take decisions based on our professional understanding of the children’s needs, and by not allowing ourselves to fall victim to, what has felt at times, a very negative and destructive culture. If we want all of our schools to do the best they can we need to encourage them and support them as they work through often very difficult and challenging circumstances not continually criticise them.
“Just a year ago were being asked how it felt to be one of the poorest performing schools in the country due to one set of Key Stage 2 assessment results, so it is even more rewarding to have had the wonderful work of the children and staff recognised during the recent inspection.
“We are still the same committed team working with the same community of children and families. We hope that our experience helps the community of the IW to recognise not just our success as an individual school, but also the fact that the reality behind some of the more negative headlines is that there are still many amazing staff working hard in schools across the IW doing their best to continually improve things for the children and young people.”
The full report
Image: Nick Amoscato under CC BY 2.0
Updated 17:00 Added quote from headteacher, Mrs Laura Bosworth.
