Sandhills Community Primary School

In April 2012, Sandhills Community Primary school stood at a crossroads. We had been judged ‘Satisfactory’ by Ofsted. I couldn’t find anyone in the school community who felt that was a fair reflection of what actually happened on a daily basis, and staff and governors were left feeling demoralised. But we knew we had to pick ourselves up and overcome this judgement, secure a better report and develop a resilience in our practice that currently wasn’t there.

We were clear about the need to accelerate our children’s progress and attainment. With this in mind, our priorities were to:

• Develop a higher quality of professional dialogue between staff about learning and teaching

• Encourage staff to use peer observation and coaching, increasing their awareness of how to challenge each other

• Secure consistently good and outstanding teaching.