All Saints’ Church of England School

All Saints’ is a small, friendly Church of England primary school providing a safe and nurturing environment in which children can flourish as they grow into caring, compassionate, and responsible individuals. We believe that by providing the right support all our children can achieve high educational standards.

Through a balance of encouraging hard work, promoting independence and applauding success School help the children to develop the academic skills and emotional strength to enable them to overcome future challenges. All Saints’ welcome children of all backgrounds and abilities and embrace cultural diversity and difference whilst always maintaining our core values. We promote Christian values as we believe they provide an invaluable foundation for life.

All Saints’ strive to develop the closest possible partnerships with childrens’ parents, All Saints’ Church and the wider community. For a copy of the school's motto, mission and ethos statement, School have a long history of encouraging parental involvement in all aspects of our children's development as, not only is it proven to be the most important factor in a child’s future success, but we believe it plays a vital part in creating All Saints’ family atmosphere.

The reconstituted governing body is clear about the strengths and weaknesses of the school. Governors have worked closely with the London Diocesan Board for Schools to commission a review of their work. As a result, they have increased their skills and plans to hold the school to account for its effectiveness.They have a clear handle on pupils’ performance and the steps needed to improve further. Governors challenge leaders about the outcomes for different groups of pupils, and records of minutes show a thorough and urgent approach for the school to move forward quickly.

The school has robust systems in place to secure the well-being of pupils, including those in the early years provision. Inspection evidence confirms that when concerns arise, leaders deal with them thoroughly. For example, in 2016, when concerns were raised about safeguarding arrangements linked to pupils leaving the school, measures were taken immediately, and leaders commissioned an audit. The review confirmed that safeguarding arrangements are effective. The audit led to the leadership team reviewing and strengthening risk assessments, particularly in relation to vulnerable pupils. Other minor adjustments included improving supervision in the playground.

The school diligently carries out investigative checks of all staff before employment, and all checks meet requirements. The school is up to date with recent statutory guidance such as ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’, September 2016. As a result, staff know the steps to take if there are safeguarding concerns in relation to pupils or a member of staff. Training is comprehensive and covers all of the key priorities in relation to child sexual exploitation, children missing education, safer recruitment and the ‘Prevent’ duty. Senior leaders ensure that they review these safeguarding matters regularly and provide updates. Designated staff undertake appropriate training. They ensure that safeguarding information is prominently displayed around the school for pupils should they need to talk to someone about their concerns. The school curriculum provides pupils with good coverage on how to stay safe. Organised workshops that include drama and visiting speakers, increase pupils’ awareness of how to keep safe online, and protect themselves from abuse.

Teachers make sure that there are good opportunities for pupils to practise their writing and reading skills. For example, pupils carry out research assignments and show that they can collate materials from different sources accurately. Furthermore, weekly focused writing in the ‘writers workshop’ across the school, and the ‘read and tell’ approach in Year 1, have begun to make a difference to pupils’ writing. Teachers support pupils well to write at length and structure their work. There is good emphasis on pupils using a cursive style and writing clearly. Evidence shows that the quality of pupils’ written work is much improved but there is more to do in relation to spelling, and using technical skills accurately.

Children enter Reception with skills below those typically expected for their age group. Children have better skills in physical development but there are weaknesses in their communication, literacy and language. Nevertheless, by the end of Reception, most make good progress in all areas of the early years curriculum because the quality ofteaching and learning are purposeful and stimulating.Good-quality teaching and high expectations of what children can achieve ensure that children achieve well each year.

The school still has more work to do to ensure that teaching is of a consistently high quality for pupils to make rapid progress. This is to enable pupils to meet the demands of a more challenging curriculum and national tests. Leaders have done much to raise expectations of what pupils can achieve, and evidence indicates that pupils are now making better progress. These are linked to teachers’ good classroom management and pupils’ positive attitudes to learning. During whole class teaching, not all teaching assistants work well with pupils. This affects the quality of support and help that pupils need to make better progress. Pupils routinely take part in self-assessment, which helps them to identify how well they understand the skills they are learning. They adopt a mature approach when discussing their work. However, teachers do not habitually reinforce editing, drafting and proofreading to develop pupils’ writing skills. As a result, pupils do not readily identify errors in their work until they receive feedback. Teachers are not always consistent in checking that different groups of pupils have a good grasp of specific skills before moving on to the next stage of learning.