Ofsted

 

Our School Improvement journey at Chapel Street is driven by what is right for our children and community – alongside our vision, values and ethos. As an ambitious school, committed to providing excellence for all pupils, we work closely with a range of external professionals to support our quality assurance processes. This includes governors, local authority school improvement partners and specialists with expertise in particular fields – for example highly regarded Safeguarding, Health & Safety and English consultants. This is in addition to our work towards specific accreditations and awards. Through these partnerships we ensure the actions we take have impact for our pupils and that our growth is continual. You can find out more about our School Improvement work on our website here and about our values and ethos here. 

Ofsted are one part of our external validation process and we are delighted to share with you the outcome of our recent inspection (December 2024) that we remain a Good school. You can find more information about what this means below. 

If you have any questions about our school or would like to know more about how we can make a difference for your child, our Headteacher and staff team are always happy to listen. You can find the Headteacher and Senior Leaders on the gates at the start and end of every day, or arrange a time to speak on the phone or meet in person by contacting the office on 0161 224 1269 or by emailing admin@chapelstreet.manchester.sch.uk. If you aren’t part of the Chapel Street family yet, we’d love to show you why we are.

Ofsted might think we’re ‘Good’ but what do our children and families say?

Whilst it’s important that we’re checking the quality of our work against national comparators and other schools, what’s most important to us is our children and families and what they think! This is their school after all and we are here to make a difference for them and our community. So…

Coming soon: What our children and families think about our school (in their own words) and what they would write in our report if they were ‘Ofsted Inspectors’. Watch this space.

Ofsted

It was very positive for us to hear inspectors’ feedback and validation of the work we do, but what meant the most was the incredible comments shared by children, families, staff and other professionals across the two days of the inspection. They were unanimous in their love of Chapel Street and what hard working, caring and inclusive children we have. The success of our school is for and because of them. 

The inspectors were clear that our school is strong and has lots of excellent provision for safeguarding, attendance, inclusion and SEND, EYFS, behaviour, personal development and wellbeing, community, reading for pleasure and our work on the quality of education. They said it was clear to see the impressive progress our pupils make from their starting points across school and that we are integral to our community.

We are pleased that Ofsted have recognised what a special place Chapel Street is and want to thank you all for your part in this - especially each and every one of our children. Your unique strengths and commitment to what we stand for as a school means we all make a difference together. We value working in partnership, with you and our wider community, in order to provide the very best care, experience and education we can for all our pupils, the support and opportunity our families need to thrive and creating a school of choice for people to work. 

You can request a paper copy of our current (or previous) inspection reports at any time from the school office either in person, by phoning 0161 224 1269 or by emailing admin@chapelstreet.manchester.sch.uk. You can also find all our full reports on the Ofsted website here.

What did Ofsted say?

Ofsted Full Inspection Report, December 2024

Below are just some of the humbling things Ofsted said about our school. They will give you a small window into why we all love Chapel Street so much and feel it is an incredibly special place to learn, work and belong:

• Pupils enjoy coming to school and have positive attitudes towards learning.
• Pupils’ well-being is paramount and they are in school as often as possible.
• Pupils are proud of the school’s diverse community.
• Pupils know and understand the school’s core values of ‘growth, respect and inclusion’. Their positive behaviour shows that they strive to uphold these values.
• Pupils at the early stages of learning to read receive effective phonics teaching.
• Parents and carers are welcomed and encouraged to join in with school life.
• Families benefit from the vast support on offer.
• Staff feel that their well-being is effectively considered by the school.
• The school forms strong relationships with families.
• The school’s motto, ‘making a difference and achieving excellence for every child,’ is at the heart of everyone’s work.
• The curriculum is well designed and enriches pupils’ learning across subjects.
• The school fosters a love of reading.
• The school ensures that the additional needs of pupils with SEND are identified quickly.
• The school’s work to ensure pupils are safe and in school regularly is thorough.
• The school has accurately identified the most important priorities to further improve pupils’ outcomes. This work is already having an impact across the school.
• The nationally published data does not reflect the strengths of the educational offer at this school.

How have our partners responded to the report?

The Local Authority have written to school and shared the following lovely feedback:

“Maintaining the judgement of Good is a tribute to the dedication of your staff and the hard work of all of the students in your school.  This is a much-deserved public recognition of the work of everyone associated with Chapel Street Community Primary School. Consistently achieving such high-quality outcomes is a challenge for all schools in the City and the impact of your work in the school and in the community is a cause for celebration for us all.”

We are proud to work with the Local Authority to share our strengths with, and gain insights from, other schools across Manchester for the benefit of all children across the city. 

Check back soon to see some of the warming responses shared by the wider Chapel Street family. 

What are our next steps?

As with all schools, Ofsted identified recommendations for next steps to continue our improvement journey. We were pleased (and not surprised) that they agreed with the priorities we had already decided upon from our own monitoring and had been part of our School Development Plan since September. These are summarised below. Not only did the inspectors agree but they were clear they could see the progress we’d already made towards achieving these objectives this term. The inspection team had confidence in the school’s leadership and staff to know what our children need and how to make any necessary changes to provide this. 

Feedback - Like many schools, we are reviewing our feedback processes in light of latest research and evidence based approaches so that teachers can identify any misconceptions or improvements in pupil’s learning as soon as possible and take the most effective steps to address these. This will help all our children make even more progress - whatever their starting points. 

Adaptation - We have worked hard to create a strong curriculum at Chapel Street. This helps our children thrive. We’re now refining this by making sure every child can access the intended curriculum in exactly the way they need to in order to make the most progress possible and have their individual needs met in all subjects. As with feedback, this is also an area that schools across Manchester and Nationally are continually developing so we’re creating opportunities to work collaboratively on this for the benefit of our children. 

Other areas we will continue improving and know are important to our children and families are:

• Providing as many rich, varied and meaningful opportunities as possible for children to experience and express creativity - across the full spectrum of arts and sciences. 
• Continuing to increase the number of trips for every year group. 
• Increasing our Forest School offer across school. 
• Expanding our current wraparound offer to 6:00pm every day. 
• Even more opportunities for families to understand our curriculum and how they can support their child’s development at home. 

 

Ofsted Full Inspection Report, July 2019

You can request a paper copy of this report at anytime from the school office. You can also find the full report detailed on the Ofsted website here.

The following are some of the quotes Ofsted used to describe our school, staff and pupils:

“Leaders have established a culture of high expectations.”

“A sense of calm and purpose flows through the school. The warm and nurturing atmosphere fosters strong relationships between staff and pupils. As a result, pupils feel safe and respected.”

“Teaching across a wide range of curriculum subjects is good.”

“Pupils make good progress from their starting points in a wide range of subjects.”

“Leaders have established a culture of success and an ethos of care and respect.”

“The strong improvements demonstrate that the school is well place to improve further.”

“The curriculum is broad and balanced. Leaders have crafted a curriculum that provides pupils with a strong sense of identity and a deep understanding of the context in which they live.”

“Pupils have access to a wide range of exciting and engaging experiences which they cherish.”

“Pupils proudly told inspectors that they respect each other’s differences, and that ‘respect’ is a key part of the school’s new mission statement.”