Inspections
Our latest Ofsted inspection took place in July 2024. We are proud to share the report with you.
We received ‘Good’ for overall effectiveness with many areas of strength, including the warm and respectful relationships that we build, our successful values and ethos, high expectations and achievements and our broad and ambitious curriculum, to name but a few!
We have a few target areas that we are working on and these are already incorporated into our school development plan for this year. This includes building on our assessment model for some foundation subjects to ensure that it is even more effective. We look forward to keeping you updated with our progress and building on our many strengths.
We are very pleased with the report and do feel encouraged that ‘improved performance’ and outstanding elements of practice were seen across school. This is down to all of the hard work of leaders, teachers, pupils and parents.
As you will see, our Catholic mission, Catholic life and caring and supportive ethos emanate throughout the report, with the children at the centre of all we do.
The quality of education and the appropriate and effective teaching and intervention of talented staff was praised; particularly through reading, maths and wider learning projects, which were a particular focus of the inspection.
The children’s excellent behaviour and relationships between staff and pupils are also something that we pride ourselves on. As part of our improvement cycle, we have taken on board views of parents and staff in regards to children’s personal development. We provide opportunities for children to embrace and immerse themselves in elements of art, music and drama and are working through a cycle of providing new and different extra-curricular activities, which will continue into next academic year.
As a leadership team, we focus strongly on school improvement and this includes sustaining what we are doing really well and developing and embedding new initiatives that will take us forward as a school. We are already working on our school development plan for next year and are excited to keep the momentum of this positive Ofsted report going forward.
At St Mary’s we are equally proud of our Catholic Mission. Our last Section 48 RE Inspection in February 2018 rated the school to be outstanding.
Comments included:
- Pupils fully appreciate and play an active role in the Catholic Life and mission of the school. They feel that St Mary of the Angels is a very special school because it helps them to recognise their duty to others in the world and to treat them as Jesus would want them to.
- Behaviour throughout the school is always excellent. Pupils show a deep respect for themselves and others. They collaborate exceptionally well during lesson times, each giving others time to speak and share their opinions.
- Pupils love their school. They are very proud to be members of St Mary of the Angels school and express pride in their own identities and beliefs.
- Almost all pupils make good progress and many pupils make outstanding progress in each key stage.
- The majority of teaching is outstanding because teachers’ planning takes into account the pupils’ current knowledge and builds upon this. Assessment is used well to build upon prior learning in order to consolidate and extend pupils’ knowledge. Teaching is never less than consistently good and often outstanding.
You can now share your views on our school via Ofsted's Parent View website. By sharing your views, Ofsted hopes you'll be helping the school to improve. You will also be able to see what other parents have said about us.