Woodlands Ofsted Report

Dear Parents & Carers

We are delighted to be able to share our Ofsted report with you; we feel this is a good reflection of what happens in our school on a daily basis.

Woodlands Primary School continues to be a good school. [Ofsted March 2022]

You can read the full report by following the link at the end of this letter but we have picked out some of the highlights below.

The opening sentence is a good indicator of how the rest of the report reads: Leaders have achieved their aim of creating a happy, caring, secure and stimulating community.

Throughout the inspection, Liz Kelly, the lead inspector, was impressed by our children both in terms of their behaviour & attitude to learning:

• Pupils really enjoy school.
• Pupils are proud to live up to teachers’ high expectations of their work and behaviour.
• Pupils, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), participate enthusiastically in learning and achieve well.
• Children in the early years learn to be polite to each other and to adults and to take turns. This ethos of mutual respect and care permeates all aspects of the life of the school.

Mrs Kelly was also impressed with opportunities our pupils are given to develop as well-rounded human beings throughout their time at Woodlands:

• Teachers ensure that pupils celebrate cultures and lifestyles which are different from their own.
• The school gives pupils many opportunities to develop a sense of social responsibility, for example by taking part in the eco club and charity work in the local community.
• Pupils relish the many leadership opportunities that staff give them, such as being register monitors in the early years and play and sports leaders or reading buddies in Year 6.
• By the time that they leave this school, pupils have undertaken many leadership roles, such as being part of the ‘tech crew’ that organises technical equipment for assemblies and school events.
   

Woodlands’ staff were wonderful throughout the inspection (as they are each & every day). Mrs Kelly was impressed with their dedication to the children in their care:

• Pupils feel safe and make the most of the high-quality learning opportunities that leaders and staff provide for them.
• Teacher make sure that lessons are calm and purposeful so that learning is not interrupted for the need for reprimand.
• Teachers have a very good knowledge of the subjects that they teach.
• When pupils find work challenging, teachers encourage them to be positive, resilient and independent.
• Teachers and teaching assistants are skilled at using a wide range of strategies and resources to make sure that pupils with SEND successfully follow the same ambitious curriculum as their classmates in all subjects.
• Pupils trust that adults deal effectively with bullying.

Both ‘areas for improvement’ are already being addressed. We are continuously developing our staffs’ expertise in phonics; we are receiving whole staff training from Read Write Inc on our INSET day on 27th May. Once our new curriculum (art, geography, history & science) has been embedded for a full 2-year cycle, we are confident that our children will be able to transfer key knowledge to their long-term memory across the curriculum.

As we said at the beginning of this letter, we feel Mrs Kelly’s report has accurately captured life at Woodlands.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who made this possible: our parents & carers, our staff &, especially, our children.

Yours sincerely,

Keith Williams

Headteacher

Jay Mangan

Chair of Governors