Lliswerry Primary School, Newport

Lliswerry Primary School is an English-medium school in Wales. Welsh schools are inspected by Estyn rather than Ofsted, and its latest report is published on Estyn's website.

It had 591 pupils in the 2025/26 school census.

30% of pupils are eligible for free school meals (three-year average).

Of its pupils, 6% have additional learning needs (21% in 2020/21); 26% are learning English as an additional language; and 35% are from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.

Year groups range from 62 pupils (Year 3) to 84 (Year 2).

Its delegated budget for 2026-27 works out at £5,390 per pupil, against £3,594 in 2021-22. It carried forward £238k of reserves at the end of 2024-25.

Estyn's report on its June 2025 inspection summarises Lliswerry Primary School like this:

"Lliswerry Primary School is a welcoming and inclusive school where staff ensure that pupils feel supported and listened to. The headteacher, along with leaders and staff, places a strong priority on the well-being of all pupils. The school focuses well on building positive relationships with parents and understanding the needs of pupils and their community. Home visits for all pupils, before they join the school, help staff to get to know families and enable pupils to settle quickly. One of the school’s notable strengths is the provision for supporting vulnerable learners. Leaders offer nurture provision across the school for pupils who need additional emotional support. Skilled staff monitor the well-being of pupils and provide flexible, high- quality support when appropriate. This has a positive impact, and most pupils behave well. They demonstrate positive attitudes towards each other, often showing respect, courtesy and empathy in their daily interactions."

"The school celebrates the diversity of its community and opportunities for pupils to share their home languages and culture, supports a sense of belonging. The school promotes healthy lifestyles and is proactive in providing sporting opportunities for pupils. Many pupils enjoy physical education and sports and most develop their physical skills well. In the Learning Resource Base, teaching is strong, and nearly all pupils make effective progress from their starting points. Across the school, many pupils including those eligible to free school meals and those with additional learning needs (ALN) make at least suitable progress in aspects of their learning. Leaders focus well on improving provision for pupils’ literacy skills and, overall, most pupils make solid progress in this area. However, provision to support the development of pupils’ mathematics and numeracy skills is not effective enough. In general, teachers identify a clear focus for lessons and help pupils know how to complete a task successfully. Most teachers use questioning appropriately to encourage pupils to share their ideas and to check their understanding."

"However, in a majority of lessons, teaching does not develop pupils’ skills well enough. The pace of learning is too slow, and teachers set tasks that do not challenge pupils sufficiently. This limits their progress in lessons and over time. In a few areas, professional learning for staff has had a positive impact on improving learning, for instance on the development of pupils’ early reading skills. However, professional learning activities are often too broad and as a result leaders are not always able to evaluate their impact on improving pupil outcomes. Leaders accurately identify many of the school’s’ strengths and a few areas requiring improvement. However, evaluations of teaching are not robust enough to identify important weaknesses that impact negatively on pupils’ progress. This also means that leaders do not take the necessary steps to address these issues."

Estyn made 3 recommendations: (1) Ensure that leaders identify and prioritise areas for development effectively and secure the necessary improvements; (2) Improve the quality of teaching to ensure that pupils consistently make effective progress across the curriculum; (3) Ensure that pupils make strong progress in mathematics and numeracy with a particular focus on the understanding of key concepts.

Estyn follow-up status: Significant Improvement.

The nearest other state primary schools to Lliswerry Primary School are Alway Primary (0.5 miles), St Patrick's R.C. Primary School (0.6 miles), Somerton Primary School (0.6 miles) and St Andrew's Primary School (0.6 miles).

The nearest railway station is Newport (S Wales) Rail Station, about 1.9 miles away in a straight line.

10 bus stops are within a five-minute walk; the closest is Nash Constitutional Club (outside), 100 metres away.