Byron Primary School

Byron Primary School

Barkerend Road, Bradford, West Yorkshire BD3 0AB

Inspection dates

13–14 December 2016

Overall effectiveness

Good

Effectiveness of leadership and management

Good

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment

Good

Personal development, behaviour and welfare

Good

Outcomes for pupils

Good

Early years provision

Good

Overall effectiveness at previous inspection

Requires improvement

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is a good school

 The headteacher provides strong leadership. His high aspirations ensure that pupils achieve increasingly well from their starting points.

 Senior and middle leaders are effective in checking the quality of teaching and pupils’ progress regularly and bringing about improvements.

 Governors are ambitious. They know the school’s strengths and priorities for improvement and provide good levels of support and challenge.

 Pupils’ outcomes are improving strongly and have risen significantly since the last inspection. The proportions of pupils reaching the expected standards in Years 1 and 2 phonics are now at the national average.

 Pupils make good progress in a range of subjects across the school, especially in writing. Across all years, pupils learn to read fluently and with meaning.

 However, in 2016, key stage 2 pupils’ reading outcomes fell. Pupils’ abilities to locate and retrieve information under test conditions were insufficiently developed, as were their skills in making inferences and drawing conclusions.

 Different groups of pupils, including disadvantaged pupils and those who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, make increasingly good progress, because of

the well-targeted support they receive.

 The quality of teaching, learning and assessment has improved notably, and is now good. Staff are keen to learn from each other and from experts in other schools.

 On occasions, some teachers do not set tasks for the most able and some disadvantaged pupils that sufficiently challenge them, especially in mathematics.

 Early years provision is good. The thoughtfully planned activities ignite children’s curiosity, indoors and outdoors. As a result, the proportion of pupils reaching good levels of development is rising, and is just below the national average.

 The school is a harmonious environment in which pupils from a range of different nationalities and backgrounds work, play and learn successfully together.

 Parents are positive about the school. They say how well adults care for their children and that they are safe at all times.

 The curriculum is well planned to meet pupils’ needs, especially those at an early stage of learning English. After-school clubs and the wide range of visits all promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development well.