St Joseph’s R.C. Primary School is a vibrant, inclusive and nurturing environment. Staff and pupils have warm and positive working relationships and, as a result, nearly all pupils feel safe in school. Teachers support the pupils’ wide-ranging needs in a stimulating and attractive environment. Nearly all pupils engage well in lessons and develop confident and mature attitudes to their learning as they progress through the school. Pupils’ conduct and behaviour towards each other and adults is exemplary. Leaders evaluate the impact of the school’s work well and have a good awareness of its strengths and areas for development. Pupils take on active leadership roles that impact positively on the life of the school. The Learning Squad’s recent work on the effectiveness of teachers’ feedback has resulted in a new whole-school approach to the way pupils assess their own learning and progress. They have evaluated the impact of this, and demonstrate the difference it has made to how pupils improve their work. Staff have a very good knowledge of pupils and their abilities. They make good use of assessment to plan for pupils’ next steps in learning and this supports good rates of progress overall. On starting school, around half of pupils are acquiring and developing English as an additional language. These pupils quickly progress and develop strong oracy skills by the time they leave the school. Staff provide a rich and stimulating curriculum for pupils. They plan engaging and creative tasks related to their topics that develop pupils’ literacy and digital skills very well. However, there are not enough opportunities for pupils to apply their numeracy skills in their work across the curriculum. In the younger classes, the provision that the pupils access independently lacks focus and, as a result, pupils are unclear about the purpose of their task or what they are learning. Pupils contribute confidently to what they would like to learn in their topics. However, they do not have enough opportunity to make choices about how they learn and there is a tendency for teachers to over-direct the learning in the older classes. As a result, there are limited opportunities for pupils to develop their independent learning skills.