Primary school praised by Inspectorate for its “caring and nurturing environment”

A Wrexham primary school has been praised for its “caring and nurturing environment” during a recent inspection.

Estyn, His Majesty’s Inspectorate for Education and Training in Wales, visited Black Lane C.P. School, in Pentre Broughton in November 2023.

The inspection focused on several areas – learning, well-being and attitudes to learning, teaching and learning experiences, care, support and guidance and leadership and management.

During its visit the Inspectorate found the school to have a “positive learning environment” which is “compassionate and support the needs of individual pupils well.”

Estyn also highlighted the support for pupils in need of additional help with their learning, which is described as a “strength of the school.

Other findings by Estyn include:

• Senior leaders promote a vision that focuses on striving to ensure that everyone is happy, healthy and safe.
• Teachers plan exciting and engaging activities for pupils and learning is fun.
• Most pupils’ reading skills are developing well. They enjoy reading and talk enthusiastically about their favourite books and authors. The youngest pupils use an appropriate range of phonic strategies to read.
• Pupils across the school make strong progress in developing their mathematical skills and use these skills at the same level across the curriculum.
• Nearly all pupils develop as confident Welsh speakers.
• Pupils make good use of the feedback that teachers provide to help them to improve their work. This is particularly evident in improving their writing.
• Teachers ensure that pupils develop their literacy, numeracy and well-being skills progressively as they move through the school. Many teachers support their pupils effectively to share learning experiences with parents through termly ‘come and see’ afternoons.
• The school is a caring, nurturing and inclusive community where pupils feel valued.
• There are warm, supportive professional relationships that support pupils to make good progress, to flourish as individuals and to ensure that pupils are confident to ask for help whenever they need it. In addition, there is thoughtful help for pupils whose circumstances may make them vulnerable to underachievement, for example through nurture provision and skilled adult support.
• There is effective provision for pupils with ALN (additional learning needs).
• The school promotes pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development well as an integral part of its daily life. From an early age, pupils are supported to care for those in challenging circumstances, and to think about the rights and wrongs of a situation
• Leaders have a clear vision for the school based on nurturing pupils’ well-being, with a strong focus on being happy, healthy and safe.

Just two recommendations were put forward for the school, including:-

• Ensure that teaching and planned activities challenge all pupils and support them to make the progress of which they are capable of
  Further develop outdoor learning experiences for pupils
• The school will now draw up an action plan to address the recommendations from the inspection.