Woodcroft Primary School’s last inspection was carried out on June 15th – June 16th 2022. We were graded as a Requires Improvement school.
September 2023 School Update
It is a full academic year since the school had Ofsted and was graded Requires Improvement for Quality of Education and Early Years. Please see below the huge steps forward the school has made on its improvement journey.
Phonics
Since last September, we have fully embedded Little Wandle into our school which is the Phonics scheme we follow. This has been a huge success and has been driven by our fantastic phonics leader Mrs Hawkins. Daily phonics lessons occur in EYFS and Key Stage 1, as well as additional lessons in Key Stage 2 for children that need additional support. Our LSAs from across the school support reading groups three times a week and this has impacted greatly on the improvement in early reading.
Phonics is tested at the end of Year 1 and we saw a significant improvement in our outcomes this year – 84% compared to National of 78.9%.
Our teaching of phonics is now being used as an exemplar for other Hampshire schools who have not made the same steps forward in their phonics practice. In June, we were monitored by our Local Authority who stated: ‘Strong progress has been made aginst this priority due to the relentless focus of the phonics leader who utilises a consistent approach to implementation of the systematic synthetic phonics scheme.’
Curriculum Development
All of our subjects have defined knowledge, skills and vocabulary that progress with each Year Group from Year R to Year 6. We have specialist support for PE across the school and for Music in Key Stage 2. We have redesigned our History and Geography curriculums to ensure that pupils can access local areas of interest and understand local historical events. We interweave trips and special visitors into the curriculum to enhance children’s understanding. This has resulted in several articles appearing in both the Art and Geography News, celebrating our work across Hampshire. We also presented at this year’s Art conference to discuss the development and progress our children have made in the subject.
Pupils using and applying their knowledge
This target has been developed alongside the work on the curriculum. Staff have undergone training on ‘retrieval practice’ and revisiting prior knowledge. These are both techniques that help children learn and embed knowledge more deeply. Our trips centre around a key question, such as ‘Were the Vikings raiders or traders? This helps children to apply their knowledge and answer broader questions using evidence they have researched.
Our monitoring has demonstrated that children are able to discuss more of their learning and explain the knowledge they have learnt more readily. We do recognise that this work will be continuous, as children need to revisit knowledge to help them embed it.
Early Years Provision
Although Ofsted did not provide the school with a target specific to Early Years, they did at the time recognise that it needed improving. Since then, we have implemented a new aspirations curriculum, which has supported more of our pupils to achieve a Good Level of development (GLD).
Our percentage of children achieving GLD was 66.7% against a national target of 67.3%. This difference equated to one third of a child! Monitoring in June by the Local Authority identified: ‘Excellent progress has been made in this area. Provision in the early years is on track to be good at the next inspection. The development and implementation of the aspirations has grown across the year. Children clearly enjoy the planned learning opportunities, which are well matched to their interests.’
Please find below our previous and most recent Ofsted report and relevant information from the Department for Education Performance Tables.
Letter To Parents Following Ofsted Report