Redhill Preparatory School, Pembrokeshire

Redhill Preparatory School is a school in Wales. Welsh schools are inspected by Estyn rather than Ofsted, and its latest report is published on Estyn's website.

Estyn's report on its November 2025 inspection summarises Redhill Preparatory School like this:

"Redhill Preparatory School provides a warm, lively and inclusive learning environment. Pupils are extremely positive about their school. They feel happy, safe and secure. Staff place great importance on building meaningful, respectful relationships with pupils, which helps create a strong sense of community and supports positive attitudes towards learning. This teamwork among all staff contributes to the calm, respectful atmosphere and strong partnerships with families, enabling most pupils to progress swiftly from their individual starting points. Since taking on their role in 2021, the headteacher has strengthened the school’s culture by promoting an ambitious vision of “education for life”, centred on developing pupils’ character, well-being and understanding of the wider world. This guiding philosophy shapes teaching, enrichment and day-to-day school life. Leaders have a clear understanding of what the school does well and what needs refining, using a wide range of evidence to plan purposeful improvement work. Staff describe the leadership team as approachable, supportive and committed to their professional growth and well-being. As a result, they work collaboratively, embrace new ideas and contribute actively to initiatives that enhance the curriculum and teaching. The proprietor plays a constructive and active role, in the life of the school, offering support and challenge in equal measure. The school’s curriculum encourages pupils to investigate meaningful questions, often through practical, outdoor experiences. These enquiries help pupils make connections between subjects and develop an understanding of environmental and social issues. Teaching is well structured, with teachers using skilled questioning and timely verbal guidance to deepen understanding. Across the school, pupils develop strong communication, reading, writing and mathematical skills. They show curiosity, enthusiasm and confidence, and those needing extra help receive timely, targeted support. Pupils demonstrate pride in their learning, form positive friendships and are well prepared for the next stage of their education. Main evaluation The Redhill Family Redhill Preparatory School is a welcoming, vibrant and nurturing school where pupils engage in their learning happily. The headteacher and staff, work conscientiously to develop strong supportive relationships with pupils that contributes to their strong sense of belonging and readiness to learn. Pupils are extremely positive about their school, they feel happy, safe and secure. There is a strong team ethos among staff, which helps to support highly positive relationships with pupils and their families. Leaders and staff, both teaching and non- teaching, actively promote a strong sense of community creating a caring and respectful environment where pupils feel safe and valued. As a result, pupils behave well and engage positively in lessons. Nearly all pupils enjoy learning and most make strong progress from their individual starting points. The pursuit of excellence within an education for life Since their appointment in 2021, the headteacher has been instrumental in building an ambitious, high-performing learning environment upon the existing strong foundations and close-knit, nurturing community. The headteacher provides inspirational, values- driven leadership that is rooted in a clear and purposeful vision for ‘education for life’. This ethos, built around the five pillars of mind, body, heart, Earth and futures, is embedded strongly across the school and is understood well by staff, pupils and parents. The relentless focus on continuous improvement, combined with a caring and collaborative ethos, ensures that pupils experience a nurturing and intellectually stimulating environment in which they thrive. The headteacher and school leaders demonstrate a deep, evidence-informed understanding of the school’s strengths and areas for improvement. The School Development Plan (SDP) is ambitious and wide-reaching, reflecting leaders’ drive for excellence. Leaders draw skilfully on a wide range of first-hand information to identify and prioritise strategic improvement targets, and through a forensic analytical approach, ensure that improvement actions are purposeful and lead to measurable impact. For example, leaders’ work to improve guided reading and mathematical problem solving has resulted in clear gains in pupils’ confidence and attainment and strong progress has been made towards the recommendations from the last inspection. Leaders foster a positive culture characterised by openness, approachability and professional trust. Staff describe leadership as supportive, collaborative and highly committed to their well-being. This nurturing leadership style has ensured staff are a cohesive and motivated team. They embrace change enthusiastically, contribute actively to improvements, such as the evolution of feedback and reporting, and collectively work in the best interests of pupils. Consequently, a very high volume of improvement actions have been successfully embedded across the school in a relatively short period of time. The proprietor is a passionate advocate of their school and plays an important supportive role in its leadership. They meet the headteacher regularly, undertake learning walks, speak with pupils and occasionally teach lessons, which provides them with first-hand insights into school life. Through the headteacher’s annual performance review and regular professional dialogue, the proprietor provides robust challenge and support. The decision to fund professional mentoring for the headteacher reflects a thoughtful and forward-thinking approach to leadership development and the prioritisation of staff well- being. Compliance oversight, policy ratification and safeguarding monitoring are highly secure, although formal documentation of a few aspects of governance such as meeting minutes, is less well developed. Relationships with parents and the wider community are extremely positive. Leaders are visible, accessible and responsive, they communicate openly and are pupil focused. As a result, parents feel well informed, supported and meaningfully involved in their children’s learning. Leaders manage the performance of staff highly effectively through a refined appraisal system that clearly links observations, feedback and coaching to whole-school and individual improvement priorities."

"The cumulative nature of appraisal records enables both leaders and staff to track their progress over time, ensuring that improvements in pedagogy are sustained. Worthwhile professional learning opportunities for staff promote a cooperative approach across the school. Teachers share ideas and adopt effective and relevant practices. This has contributed to improving aspects of the curriculum. Leaders support staff to reflect and consider the effect of professional learning on pupils’ well- being, skills and progress. Developing inquisitive, curious and excited pupils The school has developed a bespoke, enquiry-based curriculum which provides pupils with authentic opportunities to apply the full breadth of their learning, often in the local or outdoor environment. The curriculum is enriched by art, music and drama activities that are woven into the learning areas. Pupils enjoy the range of activities that they may complete both during a day and over a period of time. Teachers are skilful at adapting these to pupils’ interests. This approach helps nearly all pupils to develop impressively positive attitudes towards their learning. Spotlight: An engaging curriculum rooted in the environment Redhill's ‘education for life’ encapsulates five areas of learning; mind, body, heart ,futures and Earth. Each term classes respond to enquiry questions such as ‘What foods do we get from nature?’ (Reception). Or ‘Is Antarctica worth saving?’ (Year 6). As pupils respond to these enquiry-based questions they are supported by their ‘partners in learning’ such as a grandparent joining the class to sow seeds and maintain a school garden or an expert from a local fieldwork centre who spoke to Year 6 about the geology and wildlife found in Antarctica. Pupils are encouraged to consider sustainability as a result of their enquiry. Examples include thinking about the importance of local ingredients or looking at the amount of energy used in their homes and thinking about how their impact might be reduced. The work produced by pupils as a result of their enquiry takes a variety of forms including films, thank you cards sent to local farmers and plays or stories about animals and migration performed to younger pupils. As a result of the enquiry led approach, pupils have a deep understanding of the issues surrounding the key question posed. They apply a range of skills in an authentic context and consider how their learning may influence their family or themselves. Teachers deliver a curriculum that develops pupils’ understanding of their local area and the wider world purposefully, including making good use of the high-quality outdoor environment. For example, learning about the journey of the river Cleddau or the celebration of Diwali. Pupils benefit from an extensive range of enrichment activities, for example, visits to the Egypt centre at Swansea University or Broad Haven beach and visitors to the school (partners in learning) that help broaden their understanding of the wider world. Pupils respond positively to practical activities such as pond dipping in the school pond. Further, teachers make effective use of the school’s extensive outdoor learning environments to develop pupils’ physical skills, learning and to promote their well-being. Teachers deliver engaging and meaningful learning experiences that motivate nearly all pupils. This often includes the use of an interesting stimuli to provoke discussion, such as human skeleton or locked silver box. Lessons are usually well-sequenced, including activities that provide opportunities for effective progression in pupils’ learning. For example, in an expressive art lesson, gross and fine motor skills are progressively developed through an evolving scenario about exploring the moon. Resources both within the classroom and the outside environment, are used effectively by pupils to support their learning. Pupils are encouraged to use these to develop their independence, work together and problem solve. For example, using the word wall to identify grammatical elements in a Year 4 literacy lesson or using their problem-solving skills to identify insulators and conductors from a range of materials in Year 3 science. Teachers are strong language role models, with every opportunity taken to deepen pupils’ understanding of language. For example, asking pupils to define words such as ‘opportunistic’, ‘narrated’ and ‘predator’. Effective open questioning to extend understanding is a strong feature of most lessons. Teachers’ verbal feedback is a strength. They use positive language and personalised approaches to each pupil, addressing misunderstandings immediately. Preparing pupils for the next stage of learning Across the school, pupils’ oracy skills are especially strong. They express themselves clearly, having rapidly organised their thoughts before responding. For example, pupils in Reception use a wide range of vocabulary when talking about their guided reading text. They explain how they would be ‘terrified of a predator’ and describe how the fire ‘devoured’ the landscape. Older pupils speak articulately and confidently, they moderate their tone, expression and language when speaking to adults and use a rich range of vocabulary. Many pupils listen well, pay close attention to each other’s point of view, and make effective contributions to discussions. Most pupils make strong progress in developing their reading skills. Many younger pupils use their phonic knowledge to read words accurately and independently. As they progress through the school, many older pupils read with fluency and confidence. For example, Year 5 pupils explore excerpts from classic texts to identify key components of sentences in literacy lessons, using these to inspire their own writing."

"Pupils are immersed in an environment that has a strong culture of reading. Through purposeful guided reading activities, most pupils develop their ability to infer, predict, summarise and question the wide range of chosen texts. Furthermore, in the whole-school weekly reading assembly, pupils readily predict what may happen in a story and are happy to identify their favourite book. As they move through the school, most pupils develop their writing skills rapidly. Pupils make strong progress in their formation of letters, spelling and sentence structure, for example, in Year 1 writing descriptive sentences about the lives of sea creatures. Pupils make strong progress in developing aspects of writing such as sophisticated descriptive sentences and use of tenses. For example, in Year 4, when writing a diary of the travels of a Celtic Warrior pupils use paragraphs and write in the past tense and in the first person accurately. By Year 6, pupils identify and deploy elements of language such as simile, metaphor, personification and expanded verb phrases confidently. In addition, pupils apply their writing skills effectively across the curriculum, particularly when responding to their enquiry tasks. Pupils’ mathematical understanding and skills develop strongly over their time at the school. In reception pupils demonstrate understanding of long and short and can arrange items in order of length accurately. In Year 1, pupils identify symmetrical objects readily and use associated vocabulary appropriately. In Year 3, pupils convert between metric units securely and make sensible inferences about differences in measurement. By Year 6, pupils have a strong understanding of an extended range of topics, including number, geometry and data handling. Pupils apply their mathematical learning to different contexts within enquiry lessons accurately. In addition, they approach problem-solving activities within mathematics lessons creatively. For example, Year 4 pupils create graphs of harvest quantities to explore what we can learn from Australian aboriginal populations, and class discussion resulted in pupils deciding to adjust their graph axes to accommodate the given data. A few pupils further extend and challenge their mathematical thinking through problem- solving activities which are related to the wider world. For example, Year 5 pupils consider approaches to estimating the number of trees in a tree plantation. Pupils creatively exhibit their thinking skills. Pupils in Year 3 consider whether shape or material are the most influential factors in the design of a parachute, leading to pupils discussing whether it would be feasible to create a parachute made of rock if the shape were effective. In Year 2, pupils apply their imagination and decipher clues to determine what was hidden within the ‘silver box’. Preparing pupils for their next stage in life Pupils are extremely positive about their school. They feel happy, safe and secure. They enjoy positive, healthy relationships with their peers and all school staff. Class teachers nurture supportive working relationships with their pupils, modelling positive, caring behaviour. Pupils particularly enjoy the food provided at lunchtime and the relationships with the kitchen staff. These typify the positive relationships evident across the school, and consequently, pupils engage in positive, genuine interactions with their peers, visitors and other adults. In lively personal and social education (PSE) lessons nearly all pupils contribute to discussions enthusiastically, for example, considering topics such as grief and loss maturely after reading Michael Rosen’s Sad Book in Year 6. In considering the consequences of failure in a Year 5 PSE lesson, pupils recognise that failure is an essential component of success and that positive viewpoints can help to manage negative feelings that accompany setbacks. Pupils with needs beyond those of their peers are supported effectively by a well- developed intervention system and inclusive support within lessons. Pupils are swiftly identified, bespoke interventions are used and their impact is reviewed termly. Overall, pupils have excellent attitudes towards their learning, they are both keen and excited to learn. Their curiosity and pride in their work are evident in lessons and in their interactions with visitors and other adults. Pupils readily express their thoughts and approaches to learning when questioned during lessons and articulate their ideas clearly, and with enthusiasm. Compliance with the regulations for registration Independent school inspections are governed by the Education Act 2002 and related regulations: the Independent School Standards (Wales) Regulations 2024. These regulations require an independent school to meet an appropriate standard in the following areas: The quality of education provided by the school On the basis of this inspection, there is no evidence that the school does not comply with this Standard. The spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils On the basis of this inspection, there is no evidence that the school does not comply with this Standard. Welfare, health and safety of pupils On the basis of this inspection, there is no evidence that the school does not comply with this Standard. The suitability of proprietors and staff On the basis of this inspection, there is no evidence that the school does not comply with this Standard. Premises of and boarding accommodation at schools On the basis of this inspection, there is no evidence that the school does not comply with this Standard. The provision of information On the basis of this inspection, there is no evidence that the school does not comply with this Standard. The manner in which complaints are to be handled On the basis of this inspection, there is no evidence that the school does not comply with this Standard. Safeguarding The school's arrangements for safeguarding pupils do not give any cause for concern."

Estyn made 1 recommendation: (1) Complete and embed the improvement priorities identified in the school development plan.

Estyn follow-up status: The school does not require any follow-up activity by Estyn..

The nearest railway station is Haverfordwest Rail Station, about 1.2 miles away in a straight line.

4 bus stops are within a five-minute walk; the closest is Cawdor Close (before), 210 metres away.