Liss Infant School is a good school with many outstanding features. This school provides good quality and performance across all areas. Parents and carers agree. They say that their children are happy at Liss, are well cared for, and make good progress. One summed up the views of many with the comment, 'Each child is known as an individual...my children have thrived at Liss, where achievement is celebrated and recognised.'
Much effort has been put into making the school an attractive, welcoming environment and pupils really enjoy coming in each day. They show this through their above average attendance, good behaviour, and enthusiasm for joining in with all that the school offers. Effective strategies to improve the curriculum and teaching have raised pupils' attainment so that it is now significantly above average and higher than at the time of the last inspection. Strategies have focused on making sure that provision meets the needs of all pupils. These have resulted, for example, in a marked improvement in the attainment of the most able pupils in reading. Leaders know that more needs to be done. Attainment in mathematics, while above average, is not as emphatically so as it is in reading and writing. Girls achieve as well as boys in most subjects but not in mathematics.
Teaching and assessment are good overall, but not fully consistent. In most lessons, teachers plan interesting and varied activities that engage pupils well, encouraging them to be enthusiastically involved in their own learning. In a few lessons, activities are less imaginative and time is not so well used, so that a lively pace of learning is not maintained throughout. On these occasions, a few pupils become temporarily less well engaged. Assessment is generally used effectively to gauge pupils' progress and identify their next steps. On a few occasions, this is not so effective. Sometimes, for example, teachers do not use assessment to plan enough challenge for the most able pupils, particularly in mathematics, so that their progress, while generally matching that of other pupils, temporarily slows.
Parents, staff and governors express high confidence in the headteacher, who is providing exemplary leadership. She is sharing her strong ambition very effectively to make this an outstanding school. She provides an extremely clear lead for the school's direction and is helping staff to develop their capabilities for contributing to this. Leaders have tackled the main improvement point from the previous inspection effectively, to sharpen self-evaluation and focus it on pupils' attainment. As a result, rigorous, realistic self-evaluation has given leaders an accurate view of improvement priorities. Well considered strategies, for example to improve the quality of teaching in reading and writing, have raised pupils' attainment. Subject leaders are not sufficiently involved in some aspects of monitoring quality and performance in their areas, for example by observing lessons as a basis for guiding colleagues on how to improve their practice. Plans are in hand to tackle this. In consolidating and building further on strengths identified at the last inspection and the clarity of vision for the future, the school shows that it has good capacity to sustain improvement.
Date of last inspection: 26-Jan-10
Ofsted graded our school as good
Inspectors made judgements on a scale: outstanding (grade 1); good (2);
satisfactory (3); inadequate (4).
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