Alderbury and West Grimstead Church of England Primary School

Store Street Manchester M1 2WD T 0300 123 1231 www.gov.uk/ofsted

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Wesley Thorpe Headteacher Alderbury and West Grimstead Church of England Primary School Firs Road Alderbury Salisbury Wiltshire SP5 3BD

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Church of England Primary School

This letter sets out the findings from the monitoring inspection of your school that took place on 4 October 2022, on behalf of His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills. The monitoring inspection was carried out under section 8(2) of the Education Act 2005 and took place because the school has received two successive judgements of requires improvement at its previous graded (section 5) inspections.

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Church of England Primary School

During the inspection, I discussed with you and other staff, governors and the local authority the actions that have been taken to improve the school since the most recent graded inspection. We discussed the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. I also visited lessons, met with a group of pupils and scrutinised curriculum documents and the school development plan. I have considered all this in coming to my judgement.

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require improvement. Leaders have made progress to improve the school, but

more work is necessary for the school to become good.

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require improvement. Leaders have made progress to improve the school, but

The school should take further action to:

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require improvement. Leaders have made progress to improve the school, but

 ensure that the wider curriculum is implemented consistently well in every subject.  continue to build leaders’ skills and knowledge in driving school improvement at pace.

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Main findings

There have been several staff changes since the previous inspection. Two teaching staff left in August 2022. Three staff took up their roles in September 2022.

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Main findings

You, along with your staff, are working steadily to address the weaknesses at the previous inspection. You have introduced a new approach to teaching mathematics. This is proving effective. The curriculum is better sequenced. This is helping pupils to build their knowledge incrementally and deepen their understanding. However, you have been slower to upgrade the school’s approach to phonics. As a result, some pupils need to catch up with learning non-decodable ‘key’ words. Nonetheless, you have maintained additional support for pupils who need extra help with their reading. Consequently, these pupils’ reading accuracy and fluency are improving over time.

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Main findings

In subjects other than English and mathematics, you are implementing a new school-wide curriculum. While this work was slow to get off the ground, in part due to COVID-19, all staff are now trained in the new curriculum. Staff are working productively to implement it. Pupils are positive about the recent changes to the curriculum. Your expectations of pupils are rising because the new curriculum contains more knowledge for pupils to learn. However, there remain inconsistencies in staff’s expectations of what pupils know and can do. Leaders’ work to check how well staff implement the curriculum in all subjects is not sufficiently robust.

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Main findings

Teachers use a wide range of additional external support to develop their subject knowledge and support curriculum development. More recently, senior leaders have benefited from external support from the local authority. This has helped leaders to further develop skills and knowledge to lead strategically and improve systems to quality assure the education pupils receive.

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Main findings

I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the director of education for the Diocese of Salisbury, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children’s services for Wiltshire. This letter will be published on the Ofsted reports website.

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