Inspectors highlight room for improvement at St Peter's Primary
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ST Peter's RC Primary School in Buckie has been praised for its "welcoming, nurturing and caring ethos" by inspectors.
A team from Education Scotland visited the Buckie school in November last year during which they talked to parents/carers and children and worked closely with the acting headteacher and staff.
The newly published report praises the staff team at the school for their understanding of the challenges faced by the community as a result of the pandemic and cost of living.
They went on to say that children across the school are "focused and keen to learn" while their interactions are "respectful and supportive of each other".
The inspectors added: "Staff have created a welcoming, nurturing and caring ethos leading to positive relationships across the school community."
However, the team went on to rate the school as 'weak' in the four main quality indicators utilised by Education Scotland: Leadership of change; Learning, teaching and assessment; Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion; Raising attainment and achievement.
The inspectors identified a number of areas for improvement.
The report said: "Senior leaders and staff should work together to improve leadership across the school. In doing so, staff should support children, parents and partners to participate in evaluation activities that improves how the school works.
"Staff should work together to improve the quality of learning and teaching. This includes ensuring children are actively involved in learning.
"Staff should improve approaches to planning of learning, teaching and assessment. There is a need to ensure children’s knowledge and skills build on what they know as they move through the school.
"All staff should be involved in planning learning that supports better children with additional support needs. They should ensure that they set targets that help children make progress in their learning.
"All staff should work together to have a clear focus on raising attainment of all children."
The inspectors noted that the search for a Catholic headteacher was ongoing. The current acting headteacher – described by inspectors as a well-respected and trusted member of the school community – had only been in post for five weeks at the time of the inspection, taking over from the previous acting headteacher who was appointed in 2020.
The inspectors concluded that the school needs additional support and more time to make necessary improvements with a further inspection due to be carried out within a year.
Meanwhile, inspectors praised the nursery, which is based at the school, for the nurturing, caring relationships the manager and practitioners create with children and families, ensuring everyone feels well supported. Children are well-behaved and enthusiastic, the report stated, and they enjoy coming to nursery, and are keen to learn and experiment with writing.
All four quality indicators for the nursery are graded as 'satisfactory'.
Inspectors identified a need to provide appropriately challenging experiences across the curriculum and to develop the quality of the learning experiences available outdoors to support youngsters to develop curiosity and creativity.
Buckie councillor Neil McLennan (Independent) said the report gave a "clear starting point for growth".
"Education must be a priority for Moray," he continued.
"We need to set an aspiration for our schools to be the best in Scotland.
"As a small authority, where things can happen quickly that is achievable. I have seen it in smaller authorities and it can happen with investment in education.
"I was disappointed at the political manoeuvrings to block my continued input to education committee. Why would you not want the person with significant education governance experience and safeguarding policy expertise to be inputting to education improvement locally? Mature operating systems wish robust challenge, effective critique and challenging questions to help them improve.
"I will continue to monitor education committee closely and input where I can to provide the critical scrutiny challenge that helps educational improvement. But, that also needs decisions to be made which invest in our children and our future.
"The latest inspection report, whilst disappointing for the school, gives a clear starting point for growth. External inspectors have set out the issues they see and it is now for staff teams along with the council to ensure areas for improvement are achieved and exceeded.
"Things can and I am sure will improve. Moray has dedicated staff working tirelessly for children and the people of Moray.
"[It] will be interesting to see what budget the Conservative group plan to invest in education. Many were disappointed to hear of their budget thinking first on a radio interview; and to hear that things like reduced curriculum and changing class sizes were considerations. This is not the time to be looking to cut out future. This is the time to priorities education and our future to help Moray's future."
Councillor Sonya Warren (Buckie, SNP) commented: "I really welcome that the inspection happened at this time to help enable the staff to identify the areas that need additional work to adapt and change.
"The additional support for the primary and nursery over the next year will be very welcome to ensure that the improvements made will be the best for our young people as well as our staff.
"This was one of the first full inspections since the Covid restrictions were removed. There has been a vast change in the needs for some of our young people since Covid. Many of these children have spent the largest part of their young lives living under lockdown.
"Developing simple social skills has been far more of a challenge for some, as has learning from their peers. There's a huge change in the diversity of need for many, including a rise in the demand for ASN, with not many extra hours being funded. The staff in all our primaries and nurseries are working very hard to understand and meet these needs, as well as adapting to the additional demands our young people need to get the best from their learning journey.
"Lockdown also caused a huge delay to the improvements to the nursery setting that were due to be done be during the rollout of 1140 hours. Hopefully these will be expedited now to improve the conditions within the nursery."
The council’s Head of Education, Vivienne Cross, said: “Many of the issues raised by inspectors had been identified through the school and nursery’s own improvement processes.
“The Quality Improvement Officer and Primary Advisor linked with the school will continue to ensure that key actions for improvement are progressed at pace, ensuring positive impact on children’s learning and achievements is realised.”
The full report is available on the Education Scotland website.
