Campion School Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Improve the quality of leadership by:
  • ensuring that the targets teachers are set are monitored more regularly and robustly
  • focusing more systematically on the impacts of actions so that leaders can evaluate their effectiveness
  • insisting that all teachers follow school routines all of the time
  • making sure that leaders at all levels bring about improvements needed more quickly
  • ensuring that extra funding brought in by the pupil premium is used effectively to eradicate gaps in disadvantaged pupils’ learning.
• Improve the quality of teaching by:
  • ensuring that all teachers plan lessons that take into account learners’ starting points
  • sharpening teachers’ questioning skills so that the most able learners are challenged in their learning and move on to more difficult work.
• Improve the quality of pupils’ personal development, behaviour and welfare by:
  • eradicating poor behaviour that disturbs the learning of pupils in some lessons
  • urgently addressing pupils’ concerns about bullying. An external review of governance should be undertaken in order to assess how this aspect of leadership and management may be improved.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Requires improvement

• Leaders, including governors, have not acted quickly enough to bring about improvements in all areas of weakness in the school. Although there have been some good improvements, for example in teachers’ assessment of pupils’ work, leaders recognise that the pace of change is not rapid enough.
• Leaders do not make sure that all staff consistently follow school routines. A minority of staff do not regularly implement school rules and procedures. As a result, pupils’ experience is uneven.
• Leaders and governors have an accurate understanding of areas for improvement in the school and are bringing about improvements. However, leaders’ plans for improvement do not contain robust milestones against which successful outcomes can be evaluated.
• Leaders’ assessment of the quality of teaching is not accurate. Their tolerance of inconsistency and low-level pupil disruption is sometimes too high.
• Leaders use local partnerships to help them develop the school’s expertise in teaching and other areas, such as assessment. Leaders, however, do not do enough to ensure that this training is widely shared and used consistently. This means that it does not have the impact it should throughout the school.
• Leaders have the capacity to bring about further improvements to the school and they have the confidence of the overwhelming majority of staff.
• Provision for pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural education is improving. Leaders promote a range of activities to prepare pupils for life as good citizens in modern Britain. These include pupils learning about good mental health, becoming sports and language leaders to help in primary schools and raising money for pupil-chosen charities such as a local homeless shelter.
• The curriculum is broad and balanced. Pupils can choose from a wide range of subjects to study for GCSE examinations and beyond. Leaders make good use of opportunities in the curriculum to reinforce pupils’ learning about how to keep themselves safe.
• There are an increasing number of opportunities for pupils to attend clubs and participate in additional opportunities. Pupils enjoy a breadth of sporting opportunities, including rugby and football. They participate in regular productions, such as ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Clubs, for example chess, creative writing and science clubs, are well attended.
• Systems for reporting concerns about a pupil’s welfare are robust. Leaders are constantly developing their practice to include new requirements and higher standards. Leaders are determined to get the best outcomes for pupils from external agencies, such as social care providers. They are not afraid to keep trying if they do not think responses are good enough.
• The school’s work to promote fundamental British values is good. Pupils are clear and united in their belief that discrimination in all of its forms is wrong. As a result, there are few incidents of homophobic or racist bullying. When they do happen, leaders act decisively to deal with them.

Governance of the school

• Governors do not scrutinise leaders’ work systematically enough to analyse the impacts of their actions. While governors share leaders’ high ambitions for pupils and provide adequate challenge, this challenge is sometimes limited by the lack of effective milestones in development plans.
• Governors link increases in teachers’ pay to their performance. They do not, however, use the appraisal system for teachers well enough. They do not consistently challenge teachers’ performance where there is no application for pay increases.
• Governors are not doing enough to make sure that the extra funding brought in by the pupil premium is spent well. Reports lack measures of the impact of its use, so that it is difficult to know how successful work in this area is. Achievement for disadvantaged pupils is improving. The improvement is not fast enough, however, and governors are not clear why.
• Governors ensure that leaders make effective use of the extra catch-up funding given to the school to raise standards of literacy and numeracy in Year 7. As a result, increasing numbers of pupils in Year 7 are making the progress they should.

Safeguarding

• The school’s arrangements for safeguarding are effective.
• Leaders have created strong systems that keep pupils safe. They are caring and have created a culture of safeguarding where concerns about a pupil are acted on fully and promptly.
• Pupils know how to keep themselves and others safe. They are clear about how they would act if they or someone else was in trouble. A small minority of pupils, however, believe that there is a problem with reporting bullying at their school.
• All the necessary checks of staff, volunteers and governors are carried out and recorded accurately. This includes checks on contractors who work on the school site while pupils are in attendance.
• Leaders are vigilant and will challenge any decision of an outside agency if they believe that it is not in a pupil’s interest.
• Leaders make sure that pupils who are excluded from school for a fixed term are safe during the exclusion period. They make good use of partner schools to supervise pupils if they think a pupil is at risk at home.
• Leaders keep clear, systematic and timely records of any safeguarding concern. This means that they carefully check that pupils who follow an alternative curriculum off the school site are making progress, attending regularly and behaving well. They also make sure that these pupils are safe through regular site visits.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Requires improvement

• The effectiveness of teaching is inconsistent. Expectations for pupils’ learning are too low in too many classrooms. Pupils are not consistently challenged in their learning.
• In too many lessons, teachers do not plan with all learners’ needs in mind. Consequently, some pupils do not make the progress they should. In the strongest lessons, teachers’ planning takes into account pupils’ starting points, with the consequence that rates of progress over time for all pupils in these lessons are good.
• Some teachers’ expectations of good behaviour are too low. This means that pupils do not consistently focus well enough in lessons.
• Too many teachers do not consistently use questioning to stretch and deepen pupils’ learning. This is often linked to poor planning. In these lessons, this leads to low levels of engagement and application. It also allows misconceptions to take root. All of these limit pupils’ progress.
• Too many lower-ability classes are affected by staffing vacancies. While leaders are doing much to recruit new teachers, they have not made sure that groups of pupils who have temporary teachers are not disproportionately affected by poor behaviour and weak teaching.
• Teachers’ assessment of pupils’ work is developing well and is emerging as a strength. There is a good standard of presentation in most books. Feedback to pupils from the overwhelming majority of teachers is regular and in line with the school’s policy. Pupils find it useful because they know what to do to improve their work.
• Pupils highly value the ‘Campion comeback’ that teachers use to develop pupils’ learning at the end of an assessed piece of work. They say that they particularly enjoy questions that they feel challenge them and make them think more deeply.
• Homework is used well to develop pupils’ learning and large numbers of pupils actively engage in completing it to a good standard.
• Increasing proportions of pupils are benefiting from the extra time recently given to English and mathematics. This is resulting in more pupils achieving a good standard in these areas. Provision to support pupils whose reading is weak for their age is good.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare

Personal development and welfare Requires improvement

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare requires improvement.
• Leaders have been effective in raising most pupils’ attendance. Overall attendance is in line with the national average. Leadership in this area is strong. Time is well spent measuring the impact of interventions to see if they are effective. For example, a targeted attendance mentoring scheme has been very successful. This has also helped to raise standards and guide future action. However, attendance rates of disadvantaged pupils and pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities are too low. Persistent absence is falling quickly and is significantly lower than last year.
• Pupils’ punctuality to lessons is poor. Too many pupils take too long to arrive at classes. Teachers too often do not challenge this or impose any sanction.
• Pupils said that they sometimes do not feel listened to. They often link this to the person who they speak to first and feel that there is an unacceptable variety in adults’ responses. All pupils were confident that there were adults at school who would help them or a friend if they were in trouble.
• Leaders have not done enough to educate pupils about bullying. While the number of incidents of bullying has decreased markedly, pupils are not sure how issues are dealt with. This sometimes leads to a loss of confidence.
• Leaders’ arrangements for monitoring absence are effective. Stepped processes ensure that increasingly robust action is taken, the longer a pupil is absent from school.
• Staff are well trained in strategies to keep pupils safe. Leaders know the local community’s context well and have been realistic in tailoring the development and training of staff with these needs in mind.
• Pupils are unanimous that they know how to prevent the misuse of technology. They easily explained what they would do if they saw or experienced something online that they thought was wrong. They enjoy learning about healthy living and value recent experiences dealing with mental health.
• Pupils have access to high-quality and impartial careers advice and guidance. This puts them in a good position to make informed choices about the next stages of their education, training or employment. Leaders are careful to make sure that pupils make the right options and choices for themselves in Year 9 and Year 11.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils requires improvement.
• Pupils’ conduct is not consistently good. Where lessons are stimulating and well planned to meet learners’ needs, behaviour is of a good standard. Too many lessons, however, do not engage pupils effectively. Consequently, their behaviour dips and begins to disrupt the learning of others.
• Leaders have not ensured that teachers and other adults enforce school routines and rules consistently. As a result, there is low-level disruption in some classes.
• Pupils’ conduct around the school is not always orderly. This is particularly true in-between lessons, especially if pupils have come from an area where there are several temporary teachers.
• Pupils are generally well mannered and welcoming. They communicate naturally and easily with visitors to the school. A very small minority, however, wilfully misbehave in these situations.

Outcomes for pupils Requires improvement

• Pupils’ achievement is below that expected for their age and is not improving quickly enough. This is because leaders are inconsistent in tackling weaknesses in teaching and pupils are not making fast enough progress. Standards are improving, but the rate of improvement is not consistent in all subjects and for all groups of pupils.
• Leaders have made good progress in taking action to make sure that the information that they use about the performance of pupils is accurate. They use external partnerships well to help them increase the reliability of teachers’ assessments. Leaders have not ensured, however, that all teachers consistently use this information in the classroom to plan lessons that allow pupils to make rapid progress.
• Disadvantaged pupils and pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities are now making faster progress. However, leaders have not yet done enough to analyse the effectiveness of strategies they create to improve standards for these groups.
• Leaders have taken significant steps to improve standards in science, modern foreign languages and mathematics. They have recruited staff with the expertise needed to ensure that pupils make good progress. Standards in these areas are improving strongly. Leaders are now focusing on information and communication technology and business and geography to bring about similar improvements.
• The most able pupils often tackle work that is too easy for them. Pupils reported that tasks sometimes repeat work they have done before. The majority of pupils said that they could do more in lessons than some teachers currently expect of them. As a result, most-able pupils do not make the progress they should.
• Leaders have ambition for their pupils. The targets they set for them, however, are unrealistic. Leaders are not doing enough to ensure that targets for most-able girls are fair and achievable.

16 to 19 study programmes

• The sixth form is a strength of the school.

Good

• Strong leadership in this area has focused relentlessly on student achievement. Leaders have left no stone unturned in their analysis of last year’s results to determine their actions for improvement. Consequently, all groups of students are doing well and getting the grades they need to successfully move on to their next stage of employment, education or training.
• Although standards dipped last year, rates of progress and attainment for current students are improving rapidly. This is true for all groups, including disadvantaged pupils. Standards for the small number of students who receive support to retake their English and mathematics GCSE examinations are also improving, but at a slower rate.
• Students contribute well to the wider school. They have many and varied opportunities to become involved in helping younger pupils, whether through charity work or supporting them with their learning.
• Behaviour in the sixth form is routinely good and no poor behaviour of any kind was seen during the inspection. This reflects students’ strong commitment to their learning.
• Teaching is strong. Increasing numbers of students are meeting or exceeding their targets, and teachers’ effective questioning is a key feature of sixth-form lessons. This has the effect of stretching and challenging learners’ thinking so that they develop understanding at a rapid rate.
• Students enjoy coming to school and they value their learning. They are unanimous in their view that they get a good-quality education. They said it empowers them to make decisions about the next stage of their lives.
• Students rate the support, advice and guidance that they get very highly. The quality of advice and guidance is good and students leave the sixth form well prepared for the next stage of their education, training or employment.

School details

Unique reference number 137087 Local authority Northamptonshire Inspection number 10041570 This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005. Type of school Comprehensive School category Academy converter Age range of pupils 11 to 18 Gender of pupils Gender of pupils in 16 to 19 study programmes Number of pupils on the school roll Of which, number on roll in 16 to 19 study programmes Mixed Mixed 1220 165 Appropriate authority The academy trust Chair Headteacher Telephone number Website Email address

Peter Burrell

Claire Whitmore 01604 833 900 www.campion.northants.sch.uk csoffice@campion.northants.sch.uk Date of previous inspection 11 12 February 2016

Information about this school

• Campion School is a larger than average secondary school and has a sixth form.
• A large majority of pupils are of White British heritage and speak English as a first language.
• The proportion of pupils who are disadvantaged and are supported by pupil premium funding is below average.
• The proportion of pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities is below average.
• A small number of pupils attend off-site education at Rushmere Support Centre, Northampton Study Tutorial Centre and Greenacres.
• The school is part of the SWAN partnership, which is a group of nearby schools in the local area.
• The school meets the government’s current floor standards, which are the minimum expectations for pupils’ attainment and progress in English and mathematics.

Information about this inspection

• Inspectors observed teaching and learning across a range of subjects and year groups in 45 lessons. Some were jointly observed with senior leaders. Inspectors also heard pupils read.
• Inspectors had meetings with senior leaders, subject leaders and year-group leaders. They met other teachers and governors. The views of pupils in all year groups were obtained through meetings and through informal discussions in lessons and around the school.
• Inspectors took into account 135 responses from Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View, and an additional 61 via the free-text service. They considered the 84 responses to the online questionnaire for pupils and the 49 responses from the online questionnaire for staff.
• Inspectors looked at a range of documents, including senior leaders’ own evaluations of the school’s performance and plans for improvement, documents for managing teachers’ performance and records of training. They also looked at information on pupils’ progress and attainment, behaviour, attendance and how the school keeps pupils safe.

Inspection team

Mark Mitchley, lead inspector Annabel Bolt Laurence Reilly Eddie Wilkes Stephen Long

Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector