FROM crafting a robot and taking it for a stroll in the corridor, to quietly reading on comfy chairs - it’s all in a day’s learning at New Marston Primary School in Oxford.

If cheerful faces of children are anything to go by, it is clear the school has improved since being rated ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted back in May 2016.

It remains in special measures but new school leaders are helping to drive change, including headteacher Tracey Smith, who joined in June that same year.

Ms Smith said: “Things are really looking up for us.

“Ofsted won’t come back for a while but River Learning Trust [the multi-academy trust that now runs the school] has done its own review and it’s all been really positive.

“Reading, writing and maths has been the main focus for us and children are doing really well at the moment.

“Children and teachers are very happy here - it’s a thriving school community.”

The school currently has about 350 pupils on its roll, as well as nursery children.

The nursery moved last year from a small room to the old Marston Northway Children’s Centre, based on the same site.

Last week pupils helped to come up with a new set of values for the school, and were asked to come up with design ideas for a new logo.

Ms Smith said: “We are refreshing our vision and values and consulting the pupils on what they think is most important.

“We want pupils to feel they have got ownership of the school’s values and have a really strong say.”

Children have so far championed ‘kindness’ as the most important.

Ms Smith said the school hopes to create more links with university departments, to enable a more ‘hands-on’ and engaging approach to subjects such as science.

She added: “Many of our parents work in academic fields, so we are looking to bring more of them in to help us inspire the pupils into similar professions.”

The headteacher said it was crucial to nurture aspiration from a young age.

Staff will soon be trained in ‘high-performance learning’, which uses psychology research to help shape teaching techniques.

Ms Smith said there had also been a big push to improve extracurricular activities, and bring in music and singing to make the school more jovial.