How does the school decide priorities for development?

Our school’s performance is assessed under 6 headings:

• Catholic Life, Mission, Religious Education, Collective Worship
• Leadership and Management
• Behaviour and attitudes
• Quality of Education
• Personal development
• Early Years Foundation Stage

We constantly evaluate how well we are doing in these areas and collect evidence from all stakeholders. We gather information through our monitoring and evaluation, questionnaires and review our SIP at various points throughout the year. The governors are responsible for agreeing the priorities and ensuring that each plan is implemented.

What are our priorities?

Catholic Life:

• Pupils take a leading role in responding to the demands of Catholic Social Teaching and are pro-active in finding ways of responding, locally, nationally and globally. They can clearly articulate the theology underpinning their actions.
• Staff are exemplary role models for pupils. Through their relationships with each other and the love and care they show for pupils, they consistently bear witness to the school’s Catholic life and mission.
• The whole of the taught curriculum, with religious education at its core, is a coherent and compelling expression of the Catholic understanding of reality. 

Religious Education:

• Pupils, relative to their age and capacity, are religiously literate and engaged young people; they use their knowledge, understanding and skills effectively, to reflect spiritually, and to think ethically and theologically. Pupils can speak fluently and confidently about what they have learned in religious education, using key concepts and subject-specific vocabulary.
• Teachers have a high level of confidence based on authentic subject knowledge and teaching expertise and use questioning skilfully during lessons to identify precisely where pupils are in their understanding. 
• Leaders carefully plan an appropriately sequential curriculum which ensures that subject content is introduced systematically in an increasingly demanding way, as learners progress through the planned curriculum. 

Collective Worship:

• Pupils to have a varied experience of prayer and are able to plan, lead and reflect on practice.
• Leaders develop effective strategies to engage families in the school’s prayer life.
• That Leaders at all levels regularly review the quality of prayer and liturgy to ensure that each pupils daily prayer and liturgy is of value. 

Wider School

Quality of Education (Including Curriculum, Teaching & Learning, Assessment and Outcomes):

• Teachers check pupils' understanding consistently well to enable pupils to build knowledge more effectively over time.
• The impact of the education which pupils receive is strengthening, including for disadvantaged pupils and pupils with SEND.

Behaviour and Attitudes: (including attendance):

• Pupils have high attendance. They come to school on time and are punctual to lessons. When this is not the case, the school takes appropriate, swift and effective action.
• Pupils behave consistently well, demonstrating high levels of self-control and consistently positive attitudes to their education. If pupils struggle with this, the school takes intelligent, fair and highly effective action to support them to succeed in their education.
• Pupils consistently have highly positive attitudes and commitment to their education. They are highly motivated and persistent in the face of difficulties.

Personal Development:

• The school provides a wide range of opportunities to nurture, develop and stretch pupils’ talents and interests. Pupils appreciate these and make good use of them.
• The school provides pupils with meaningful opportunities to understand how to be responsible, respectful, active citizens who contribute positively to society. Pupils know how to discuss and debate issues and ideas in a considered way.
• Broaden the experiences and opportunities for pupils to learn about democracy.

Leadership and Management:

• Leaders focus on improving teachers’ subject, pedagogical and pedagogical content knowledge in order to enhance the teaching of the curriculum and the appropriate use of assessment. The practice and subject knowledge of staff, including ECTs, build and improve over time. This includes building teachers’ expertise in remote education.
•  Leaders engage with their staff and are aware and take account of the main pressures on them. They are realistic and constructive in the way they manage staff, including their workload.

EYFS:

• To improve the % of children meeting GLD with a particular focus upon communication and Language and phonics.
• The curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced. It builds on what children know and can do, towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for their future learning
• Staff create an outdoor environment that supports the intent of an ambitious, coherently planned and sequenced curriculum. The resources are chosen to meet the children’s needs and promote learning.