Ofsted have today (Wednesday) published their latest inspection report for Nine Acres Primary School in Newport.
The previous inspection in 2012 found the school to be ‘Good’. The latest report gives the school an overall rating of ‘Requires Improvement’.
Behaviour and safety of pupils and early years provision were found to be ‘Good’, whilst the leadership and management, quality of teaching and achievement of pupils all ‘Require Improvement’.
Strengths of the school
The inspector found the school has the following strengths:
- The school’s work to keep pupils safe and secure is outstanding. Very strong safeguarding procedures are fully implemented by an exceptionally caring staff. As a result, pupils say they feel very safe in school. Parents fully support this view.
- Although not making the more rapid progress of which they are capable, pupils are well behaved and eager to learn. They enjoy coming to school and want to do their best.
- Excellent relationships exist between pupils and their teachers. This underpins pupils’ strong spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
- Provision for disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs is good. As a result, this group of pupils make good progress from their starting points.
- Early years provision for children in Reception is good. Children are taught well and make good progress because of stimulating activities.
Why the school isn’t ‘Good’
The Inspector said the school isn’t good because:
- In relation to their starting points, pupils’ average levels of attainment show that achievement requires improvement. Although rising, attainment is not improving rapidly enough.
- Leadership and management require improvement. Recent strong leadership, from the acting headteacher and deputy headteacher, has not had time to fully address a legacy of underachievement. Good teaching has not yet been secured across the school.
- New governors do not have all the skills they need to challenge and support school leaders in their bid to improve teaching and pupils’ achievement.
- Teaching requires improvement because some groups of pupils are not making the best progress they could in writing and mathematics.
- Some teachers are not yet secure in the new methods introduced this year. New strategies have not had time to become embedded to sufficiently overcome underachievement.
- The subject knowledge of some teachers is not sufficiently secure, especially in mathematics. This means that learning is not adjusted quickly enough in lessons so that challenge, especially for the most able, is not introduced quickly enough.
- Teachers’ marking of pupils’ work to help them improve is not consistent across the school. Pupils’ lack of a positive response is not followed up.
- Staff are not giving enough attention to the development of pupils’ handwriting skills, especially in Key Stage 1. This results in poor presentation of their work.
The Report
Full details can be found in the report below. Click on the full screen icon to see larger version.
Image: hansel5569 under CC BY 2.0
