Staff, pupils, Governors and parents at Ewanrigg Junior School in Maryport are celebrating this week after Ofsted praised them for their hard work and achievements. Ofsted said that the school is a well led, well managed, satisfactory school that is rapidly improving.
Inspectors, who visited the school in early October said that the new Headteacher, Yvonne Craig provides strong and dynamic leadership. The school's finances are carefully managed and gives satisfactory value for money overall.
The report highlighted that much has been achieved in a short time and that Miss Craig’s leadership focuses on setting high expectations in raising standards and the quality of education.
The main strengths of the report are as follows:
1. The school provides good personal development and well-being of all 175 pupils who have good relationships and skills that will stand them in good stead for the future.
2. Care, guidance and support are similarly judged as being good, with inspectors praising the relationships between staff and pupils.
3. Support for children with special educational needs is highlighted as good, with many extra support programmes available for children to access.
4. Behaviour was identified as being consistently good and children are described as being enthusiastic about their learning.
5. Teaching and pupil progress were graded as satisfactory overall, with many good features. However, writing needs to be improved and more focus must be given to tracking and monitoring pupil’s attainment, especially for the highest achievers.
6. Lessons were described as enjoyable and the way teachers praise pupils to boost confidence was highlighted as a strong feature of the teaching.
7. The curriculum offered to children was also praised and judged as being good. It is planned well by teachers, meets the needs of all learners and is brought alive by a wide range of exciting activities both in and outside of the classroom and the school day.
8. The use of teaching and learning support staff for class work and ICT was also praised as being beneficial to pupils.
Head teacher, Yvonne Craig, is delighted with the report. She said:
"This report recognises the hard work and teamwork of everyone involved –staff, governors, parents and of course the children, who enchanted the inspectors with their kindness, politeness and helpfulness. It confirms the strengths of the school and gives the school a baseline to move forward. I am particularly pleased that the inspectors recognised that they could not find any areas for improvement that the school had not already identified and planned for in the new School Improvement Plan."
Pat Nicholson, Chair of Governors said:
"This is a really positive report and I would like to congratulate everyone involved for the best Ofsted report for our school, so far. I look forward to continued improvements as the school fulfils it’s good capacity to improve."