High quality teaching and exemplary attitudes to learning at successful city school

Pupils at a successful Exeter primary school make rapid progress because of top quality teaching and highly positive attitudes to learning, according to education inspectors.

Clyst Heath Nursery and Community Primary has just been rated as good with outstanding features by inspectors from the school standards agency Ofsted.

“The school has successfully established a trend of improving attainment since its previous inspection,” they say.

“There is a very strong learning ethos and pupils want to achieve well. Attainment is rising and is on track to rise further. Teaching is uniformly good and a significant proportion is outstanding.

“Teaching assistants demonstrate new skills clearly (and) are remarkably effective.  Pupils’ attitudes to learning are exemplary because they are so engaged in their lessons.”

Three inspectors from Ofsted spent two days at Clyst Heath last month and their report has just been published.

“This is a good school,” says lead inspector Patricia MacLachlan. “Excellent relationships between pupils and staff encourage highly positive attitudes to learning and lead to exemplary behaviour.

“Pupils’ thoughtfulness towards others and their excellent attitudes to school play a major role in helping them to make good progress.

“Pupils behave with the utmost courtesy towards adults (and) say they feel safe and very valued by staff.”

The inspectors say that the exceptional leadership of headteacher Karen Hadley is supported by a talented senior team.  The Clyst Heath governors are committed, hard-working and conscientious.

This is all producing rapid growth in the school’s performance with pupils’ progress – particularly in maths and reading – accelerating well this year.

Year 6 pupils have made rapid progress and the school is well placed to sustain further rises in performance because progress has been rapid in all subjects in Years 4 and 5 as well.

“Pupils are aware they are doing well – a view shared by their parents,” says Ms MacLachlan. “The school has developed a strong partnership with parents and is very highly regarded.”

She says Clyst Heath promotes pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development exceptionally well and visits and visitors contribute to widening the children’s horizons.

They are extremely proud of their school ethos and try to live up to the motto: ‘Achieve the best’.

To improve even more, the school should increase the amount of teaching that is outstanding and help parents make an even bigger contribution to raising their children’s achievement.

Devon County Council built the school to serve the growing Clyst Heath community. It opened in September 2005 as part of the successful reorganisation of education in Exeter.

Mrs Hadley has been head since the school opened and has seen it grow to 296 pupils.

Mrs Hadley said: “It is a true reflection of the dedication, hard work and commitment from the pupils, staff, parents and governors.

“Clyst Heath has demonstrated that it is a community school in a very real sense.”

“At the point of receiving feedback from the lead inspector, she began by telling us that we were a remarkable school.

“We are very pleased and proud that the report reflected this so well.”