Following a visit on May 7 and 8, inspectors found the St John Baptist Southend Church of England Primary School had “taken effective action to maintain the standards identified at the previous inspection.
“Pupils consistently live and breathe the school’s rules of being kind, respectful and trying one’s best,” the report said.
These values help them to “embody the school’s values and its vision, which is to ‘be a shining light’”.
Inspectors highlighted that pupils “show these values through their compassion towards, and celebration of, each other’s achievements,” creating a “strong sense of community, belonging and inclusion”.
Children are “happy, enjoy their learning and are kept safe,” and parents were described as “positive about their children’s education”.
One pupil summed up the mood, saying: “We like coming to school because the teachers really care about us.”
The school was credited with delivering a “rich and ambitious curriculum” where “staff have secure subject knowledge, aided by numerous training opportunities”.
From early years onward, pupils “play safely, take turns and share”. Pupils were described as “very polite, showing respect to adults and each other”.
The teaching of phonics begins “within two weeks of children joining the Reception Year,” with “most pupils build their reading confidence and fluency by the end of Year 1”.
The school was also found to foster “a love of reading through a range of carefully chosen texts”.
Pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities are “carefully identified and sensitively supported”, with staff adapting lessons “appropriately to ensure pupils with SEND can successfully access the same curriculum as their peers”.
However, Ofsted noted that “in some subjects, curriculum implementation does not enable pupils to remember the content taught previously,” and that “in some instances, tasks are not well selected to enable some pupils to embed and apply their knowledge”.
The visit was an ungraded inspection, meaning the school’s previous ‘Good’ rating from January 2020 remains in place.
