Watchdogs praise Angmering primary school

Staff and pupils at a village school are celebrating after an overall “good” rating from education inspectors.

And there was more positive news for St Margaret’s CE Primary School, Angmering, from a further assessment, of its religious status, which was judged to be “outstanding” in all aspects.

Three inspectors from Ofsted made a two-day visit to the school in September, observing lessons, interviewing staff, a number of the 500 pupils and their parents and assessing documents and record-keeping.

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Summing up their findings in the newly-released report on St Margaret’s, they say: “Pupils make consistently good progress as they move through the school, reaching standards in English and mathematics that are above average by the time they leave year-six.

“Teaching is good, and sometimes outstanding, enabling pupils to learn well in most lessons.

“The school’s care and support systems are excellent in helping pupils who find it hard to learn to be happy in school, overcome their difficulties and ensure they learn well.”

The inspectors also praised pupils’ good behaviour and “excellent relationships” with adults and each other, as well as “a highly-developed understanding of right and wrong”.

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The “strong” governing body and senior leaders “have a clear vision which the staff share”, the report adds.

Areas needing further improvement have been correctly identified and have already had an impact on raising standards, most notably in writing.

St Margaret’s the inspectors conclude, is not yet an outstanding school for two reasons: there is not a high enough proportion of outstanding teaching to enable all pupils to make consistently rapid and sustained progress; and too few pupils are making outstanding progress in mathematics, “because they are not challenged often enough with activities which really stretch them”.

The separate, section 48 statutory inspection of St Margaret’s as an Anglican school says its distinctiveness and effectiveness as a Church of England school are outstanding.

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Inspector Connie Hughes paid a two-day visit last month to assess the school’s religious aspects.

She reports: “Parents identify with the reputation of the school as a faith school with an ethos of ‘friendship and caring, like a family where all children know each other’.”

Long-standing parents, she notes, “confidently summed up ‘the school will always go a step further for us and our children’ and ‘they thrive here’.”

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