Inspectors give 'creative' Castel Primary thumbs-up

HM Inspectors, using the Education Scotland framework, spent three days in the school last month judging the level of teaching, pupil experience, leadership, effective learning and improvements through self-evaluation, which were all deemed 'very good'.

Improvements in performance was ruled to be 'good', out of the six indicators under the framework, which are excellent, very good, good, satisfactory, weak and unsatisfactory. The report said this was the main area at the school that could be developed.

'Teachers should use courses and programmes flexibly to ensure a suitably brisk pace of children's learning to enable them to achieve the best possible outcomes,' the inspectors said.

Head teacher Linda Paley, who has been in her post since September 2015, said the school had introduced many new initiatives in recent years to widen children's learning.

'We have taken on new ways to develop key skills for learning for all of the children,' she said. 'We want them to develop a range of skills that will give them firm foundations to build on in an ever-changing world.'

Outdoor learning plays a larger role than in the past, said Ms Paley, as do more interactive lessons. 'We had a fire-pit installed at the back of the school field which we use to engage and motivate the children,' she said.

'When they learned about the Great Fire of London they made homes, they made eye-witness accounts, wrote poems, it was all about living history really. That deepened their learning and we saw much better outcomes because of that.'