Berridge Primary and Nursery School Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Improve leadership and management, by:
  • ensuring that all leaders communicate high expectations for pupils’ achievements in key stage 1 and raise the pupils’ outcomes in all subjects
  • ensuring that governors check closely the effectiveness of actions taken by leaders to bring about better outcomes for pupils
  • ensuring that all leaders monitor their areas of responsibility effectively and provide timely support to improve the quality of teaching and pupils’ outcomes for all abilities, including those pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities
  • monitoring the impact of the sports funding more closely to check if the quality of teaching for physical education has improved and if both boys and girls are participating in more extra-curricular sporting activities
  • developing the curriculum, particularly in key stage 1, to motivate boys and improve their progress.
• Improve the quality of teaching in writing in key stage 1, by:
  • ensuring that teachers have high expectations for the quality of pupils’ writing in all subjects
  • correcting pupils’ misconceptions to enable them to make faster progress in writing
  • supporting the pupils to improve their structuring of sentences
  • improving pupils’ handwriting skills.
• Improve the quality of teaching and raise pupils’ outcomes throughout the school, by:
  • ensuring that pupils are clear about the purpose of lessons
  • ensuring that pupils have more opportunities to answer questions requiring inference skills (using clues in a text to reach a conclusion) and to summarise texts to improve their reading comprehension skills
  • providing more opportunities for pupils to practise their reasoning skills in mathematics
  • consistently providing work which more suitably challenges the most able pupils.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management

Requires improvement

• Leaders have not ensured that the quality of teaching, learning and assessment is consistently good across the school, particularly in key stage 1. As a result, pupils do not make enough progress from their starting points. Pupils’ outcomes at the end of key stage 1, in 2015 and 2016, were below the national averages in reading, writing and mathematics.
• The school improvement plan does not clearly identify the intended impact that improvement activities will have on pupils’ achievement. This makes it more difficult for governors to hold leaders to account.
• The impact that leaders make on improving the quality of teaching and learning is variable. New leaders in key stage 1 have not yet had the opportunity to implement changes and so improve the quality of teaching and learning in key stage 1. In key stage 2, leaders have not ensured that mathematical reasoning is taught consistently well in all classes. However, leadership in the early years has been effective and has led to improved outcomes.
• Leaders responsible for the progress of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities provide effective support to help teachers and teaching assistants to meet the individual needs of specific pupils. However, they do not regularly check the progress of all pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities across the school. Consequently, leaders do not consistently check that the special educational needs funding is meeting the pupils’ needs in all year groups.
• The curriculum in key stage 1 does not inspire the boys to achieve as well as the girls. During lessons, some boys can lose their focus and do not consistently engage in their learning. In addition, the teachers do not always explain clearly to the pupils the purpose of the lessons. As a result, the boys in particular do not focus as well as they should, and their progress slows.
• The executive headteacher, ably supported by the head of school, is making improvements. At the previous inspection, leaders were asked to improve the pupils’ progress in English grammar, spelling and punctuation. As a result of raised expectations, the pupils’ outcomes for these aspects of writing at the end of key stage 2 improved in both 2015 and 2016.
• Effective leadership of English in key stage 2 has led to important improvements since the previous inspection. High expectations and regular checks on the quality of teaching have resulted in better outcomes for pupils. Writing in key stage 2 is a strength of the school and outcomes in 2016 were above the national average.
• Leaders have ensured that the professional development of staff is focused on the key priorities to improve the pupils’ outcomes. Performance management, including targeted support for staff, has led to improved provision in the early years and in some areas in key stage 2. However, there is still too much teaching which is not good in both key stages 1 and 2.
• The school provides a range of intervention groups to accelerate the progress of disadvantaged pupils through the school. The funding has improved the progress of disadvantaged pupils in writing and mathematics. This group of pupils made better progress than other pupils nationally in writing and mathematics in key stage 2. However, the progress of this group in reading was well below other pupils. The school’s current tracking system shows that disadvantaged pupils are on track to make much better progress in reading this year.
• The sports funding has been used to increase the range of extra-curricular opportunities available for the pupils to include climbing and cricket. Leaders track how many pupils participate in the clubs, including disadvantaged pupils. However, leaders have not checked closely to see if both boys and girls are participating in the extra-curricular activities. In addition, leaders have not checked closely if teachers’ skills and knowledge to deliver physical education has improved as a result of observing sport coaches delivering lessons.
• Leaders promote the pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development well. The pupils participated in Black History Month and researched how individuals such as Rosa Parks, have challenged racism. Pupils have the opportunity to visit mosques and churches and to learn about different religions around the world. To mark Eid and Ramadan, a classroom is made into a prayer room for those pupils who want to participate. Pupils have a good knowledge of different religions.
• British values are also promoted well. Pupils in Years 5 and 6 learn about healthy relationships in the ‘GREAT’ project. Pupils learn how relationships can be between opposite and same-sex couples. Pupils are tolerant of people who have different lifestyles to that of their own.
• The school has positive relationships with the parents and promotes equality of opportunity well. The vast majority of parents who spoke to the inspectors were happy with the school. They feel the school is a safe place. The parents spoke highly of the school staff. They say staff are always approachable and will follow up any concerns quickly, and report back to the parents. Leaders have worked well to overcome some parents’ anxieties about girls participating in swimming lessons. As a result, all girls now participate in the school swimming lessons.
• Pupils in key stage 2 appreciate the opportunity to learn to play the trumpet or the baritone in Year 4. Pupils have the opportunity to continue to learn to play these instruments in Years 5 and 6.
• The large majority of the staff feel that the school has improved since the last inspection. All staff feel that pupils are safe at school and the pupils’ behaviour is good.

Governance of the school

• The governing body is very committed to the school. Governors are proactive and after the last inspection, organised their own external review of governance. The governors have a good knowledge of the pupils’ progress through the school and the outcomes achieved by the pupils. They are aware of weak outcomes at the end of key stage 1. The governors go into school and check the progress that leaders are making towards meeting the targets within the school improvement plan. However, it is difficult for the governing body to know how well the school has achieved the targets within the plan because the success criteria are not consistently clear.
• The governing body ensures that the arrangements for the performance management of staff are robust. They question the leaders to determine how they have assessed teachers’ performance and the range of evidence used. They use the local authority adviser to help them set targets to manage the headteacher’s performance management. Only good performance is rewarded.
• The governors monitor closely the school’s safeguarding procedures. Safeguarding is on the agenda of every governors’ meeting and the link governor meets the designated senior lead for safeguarding each term to review the school’s work.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.
• The inclusion lead and the family resource worker are highly skilled and know the pupils and the families well. The family support worker establishes good relationships with the families and provides effective support to meet their needs. They are proactive and respond to any disclosures quickly. Their record-keeping is very detailed, of high quality and records are securely stored.
• Staff receive regular training to keep them updated on safeguarding matters. They have had training in relation to child sexual exploitation, female genital mutilation and extremism and radicalisation. They are knowledgeable and the inclusion lead has recently been asked by the police and social care to share their good practice with other schools in the local cluster.
• The school staff demonstrate persistence when working with external agencies. They regularly make contact with other professionals to resolve queries and request minutes of multi-agency meetings that involve pupils from the school. Moreover, the school challenges external agencies if decisions about a child’s welfare have not been made urgently enough, or if they feel the wrong decision has been made.
• The school’s recruitment procedures are thorough. The office manager completes all the necessary checks before a member of staff is allowed to start work at the school.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Requires improvement

• Teachers have not had high enough expectations of what pupils can achieve, particularly in key stage 1, and for the most able pupils in reading and mathematics throughout the school.
• Close scrutiny of pupils’ written work in key stage 1 shows that pupils’ understanding of sentence structure is not developing quickly enough and teachers do not have the same expectations for the quality of pupils’ work in the topic books as they do in their literacy books. Pupils’ handwriting is not as developed as it should be. Teachers do not consistently correct pupils’ punctuation errors and their misuse of capital letters. Consequently, pupils’ progress in writing in key stage 1 is not quick enough.
• Not all teachers are providing enough opportunities for pupils to master the skills in mathematics being taught. In some mathematics lessons in key stage 2, pupils’ reasoning skills are not promoted well enough to deepen pupils’ understanding. In key stage 1, very few examples of pupils developing their reasoning skills within their workbooks are evident.
• When they intend to do so, teachers do not always make clear the purpose of the lesson. During a lesson in key stage 1, some pupils did not know that they were supposed to be finding features of instructional writing in a text. Furthermore, some pupils could not read the text and gave up. In another lesson within key stage 1, pupils were asked to put adjectives and connectives into their writing. When an inspector asked some pupils what they were learning, they were confused and did not know how to extend their sentences using connectives.
• Pupils’ writing in key stage 2 is promoted well. Teachers have high expectations that pupils will write grammatically correct sentences and use the correct punctuation. There are regular opportunities for pupils to be creative and to develop their figurative writing skills. For example, in Year 6, one pupil wrote, ‘The smoke’s fingers clasped onto the culprits.’
• Teachers in key stage 2 use the school’s assessment system for writing well to ensure that pupils are on track to meet the age-related expectations. Pupils are clear about what they have to do to improve their writing. Some pupils said that writing makes them think hard and that they enjoy it. The current pupils’ books show consistent good progress in writing through key stage 2.
• The school’s international unit in key stage 2 is very effective. Pupils attend the provision if they arrive at the school with little or no English. The teacher’s high expectations and expertise enables pupils to gain quickly a good knowledge of English grammar. Pupils make rapid progress and, when they are ready, they join their peers full time in class.
• Teachers are promoting a love of reading through book studies. This involves pupils studying texts such as ‘Holes’ by Louis Sachar for four weeks to gain a better understanding of the texts. Pupils say they enjoy reading and many read at home.
• Pupils know how to complete written calculations well. There is clear progression in the pupils’ work. In addition, pupils regularly solve word problems to consolidate their mathematical knowledge.
• Pupils are challenged well in science. In Year 5, pupils were devising questions for a branching diagram to sort bird eggs. They found this challenging and were learning quickly how to refine their questioning. Most pupils were achieving at age-related expectations.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Good

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is good.
• Pupils demonstrate positive attitudes to their learning. Most present their work to a good standard. Pupils cooperate well with each other in lessons.
• Pupils have a good understanding of online safety. They know not to put their personal information online.
• Leaders are proactive to ensure that pupils remain safe out of the school. Year 6 pupils benefited from a talk by the police about gang culture and how not to get involved. All pupils are reminded before school holidays about being safe crossing roads.
• The pupils know what foods to eat to have a healthy diet. Pupils understand the importance of eating fruit and vegetables as part of a balanced diet.
• Leaders promote the school’s core values well through assemblies and displays around the school. The pupils are well aware of the values. The head of school promotes pupils’ aspirations by displaying information about the careers of former pupils. For example, a former female pupil is now a doctor.
• The pupils said bullying can happen occasionally but they know that they can always go to a member of staff and action is taken to stop it. During anti-bullying assemblies, pupils act out scenarios showing bullying. The pupils said this is very effective and makes them think about the harmful effects of bullying. The school takes strong action in response to any racist incidents. There are a few incidents recorded by the school. Repeated incidents are rare.
• Pupils are encouraged to exercise and stay fit. The school organises a biennial Olympic day with other local schools to promote pupils’ interest in track and field events. In addition, Year 6 pupils helped to organise a football tournament last summer at the same time as the European football championships. The school records show that more pupils are involved in extra-curricular sports than previously.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils is good.
• Pupils and staff say behaviour is good. Pupils are extremely polite and well-mannered. They move around the school in an orderly fashion and open doors for each other and adults.
• Pupils know and understand the school’s behaviour policy well. This promotes good behaviour in class and on the playground. In class, pupils remain focused in lessons and disruption to learning is rare.
• The pupils enjoy breaktimes. There is sports equipment and a trim trail for pupils to use. Playground monitors wear high visibility jackets and inform staff if there are any problems. Pupils say behaviour at playtime is mostly good.
• Pupils’ attendance has been high. The attendance of pupils in the last academic year was above the latest national average for all pupils. The school monitors attendance closely and takes prompt action if a pupil’s attendance falls. There are a range of awards for pupils to aspire to to promote good attendance which include wearing 100% attendance badges.
• When teaching is less effective, pupils lose their focus and this slows their progress in lessons.

Outcomes for pupils Requires improvement

• Pupils, particularly the most able pupils, did not make as much progress as other pupils nationally in reading from the same starting points through key stage 2 in 2016. Outcomes for reading for the past two years have been below the national average at the end of both key stages 1 and 2.
• Close scrutiny of pupils’ current written comprehension work shows that pupils are not developing their answers well enough when answering questions which require them to infer meaning from their reading and to explain their reasons. The most able pupils, including the most able disadvantaged pupils, are not currently demonstrating good progress for reading.
• The most able pupils are not challenged consistently well enough in mathematics in both key stages. Their reasoning skills are not developed well enough to enable them to have a deep understanding of mathematics to solve complex problems. The proportion of pupils who achieved highly at the end of key stages 1 and 2 is below the national average.
• Outcomes in the Year 1 phonics check have risen over the last two years and are now just below the national average. Pupils use their phonic strategies well to read unknown words. However, reading records show that some lower-ability pupils are not heard reading frequently enough to improve their fluency. In addition, pupils’ reading books are not always well matched to the individual pupil’s reading ability.
• The progress of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities is variable across the school. Some pupils have made accelerated progress from their starting points, but others have not met their learning targets. The progress of this group of pupils is not consistently good.
• The proportion of pupils who achieved at age-related expectations in mathematics at the end of key stage 2 in 2016 was above the national average. Pupils made significantly above average progress from their starting points at the end of key stage 1. Outcomes in mathematics at the end of key stage 1 remain low.
• The proportion of pupils who achieved at the expected level, or at the higher level, in writing at the end of key stage 2 in 2016 was above the national average. The progress made by pupils in writing through key stage 2 was in the top 10% of schools nationally.
• Disadvantaged pupils made better progress than other pupils nationally through key stage 2 in writing and mathematics in 2016. In key stage 1, the proportion of disadvantaged pupils who achieved highly in mathematics was above other pupils nationally. However, the outcomes for this group of pupils at the expected level for all subjects at key stages 1 and 2, except for writing at key stage 2, are below the outcomes of other pupils nationally.
• Pupils’ outcomes in English grammar, spelling and punctuation were just below the national average in 2016 at the end of key stage 2. The average spelling mark of pupils was in line with the national average. Current work shows that most pupils regularly complete their spelling corrections with their black editing pens and are spelling age-appropriate words correctly.

Early years provision Good

• Children thrive in the early years. The baseline assessments of the children on entry into the Nursery show that the large majority of children start school with skills below those typical of children their age, particularly in the areas of communication and language. Outcomes at the end of the early years show that the proportion of pupils who achieve a good level of development is just below the national average. This represents strong progress from their starting points.
• The early years is well led and, as a result, there has been a rapid increase in the proportion of children achieving a good level of development over the past two years. The current leader, who only started last September, is passionate about improving the early years provision even further. She has delivered training to staff to further develop their questioning skills. However, the leader has not yet fully evaluated the impact of this work on children’s learning.
• The early years leader has closely analysed the progress of different groups of pupils. She has put in place intervention groups to increase the progress of groups of children, particularly boys, to enable more of them to achieve a good level of development. In 2016, more girls than boys achieved a good level of development. However, the difference was smaller than the national difference between boys and girls.
• The school uses the early years pupil premium funding to employ two members of staff to support learning outside of the classroom and to develop the children’s language and communication skills. The proportion of disadvantaged children who achieved a good level of development has risen for the past two years and is close to the national average for other children. This represents good progress for these pupils from their starting points.
• The early years leader is also ensuring effective provision for the most able children. For example, this group of children have had further teaching to promote their problem-solving skills in mathematics to enable more of them to exceed the early learning goals.
• Staff in the early years have been trained effectively to promote pupils’ language and communication skills. Teaching assistants skilfully repeat words and break down stories to enable the children to develop their understanding of language. This contributes to the children making rapid progress.
• Teaching assistants skilfully support children who have special educational needs and/or disabilities to participate in learning activities. The school uses the expertise of external agencies and staff, such as speech and language therapists, to meet the children’s needs.
• Children’s understanding of words is promoted very well. In the Nursery, children were highly engaged when reading the story, ‘Farmer Duck.’ The children were encouraged to participate in reading the story. When reading the story, the teacher physically demonstrated the meaning of words, for example ‘sawing’. The children also practised the same action and clearly understood the meaning of the word.
• The provision in the Reception Year has improved since the last inspection. The children are highly engaged in their learning, communicate well with each other and to adults and are well behaved. Outdoors, the children have opportunities for purposeful play in the mud kitchen, riding on tricycles and painting. The outside area is well supervised and children move around safely. Inside, children were observed learning how numbers were formed and the most able were learning how to add two numbers together.
• There are a wide range of activities such as potato printing, playdough, and role play for children to act out as superheroes. Staff carefully promote children’s language development through concise questioning during these activities. The children’s use of language develops quickly.
• The staff use assessment well to plan the next steps. The children’s learning journeys contain frequent assessments by the staff which record the children’s progress in different areas of learning. The children make strong progress and are increasingly well prepared for Year 1.
• The staff have good links with parents. The stay and play sessions are well attended by parents. Parents who spoke to inspectors said that these sessions have helped them to support their child’s learning at home.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 139429 Nottingham 10019577 This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005. Type of school Primary School category Age range of pupils Gender of pupils Community 3 to 11 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 706 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Executive Headteacher Don Ross James Tee Telephone number 0115 9155813 Website Email address www.berridgeprimary.com headteacher@berridge.nottingham.sch.uk Date of previous inspection 12–13 November 2014

Information about this school

• The school meets requirements on the publication of specified information on its website.
• This school is much larger than the average primary school.
• The proportion of disadvantaged pupils, for whom the pupil premium funding provides support, is above the national average.
• Most pupils come from a range of minority ethnic backgrounds. Most pupils speak English as an additional language.
• The executive headteacher is a local leader of education.
• The proportion of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities is above the national average.
• The proportion of pupils who arrive at the school or leave the school during the school year is higher than the national average.
• The school meets the government’s current floor standards, which set the minimum expectations for pupils’ attainment and progress in reading, writing and mathematics.

Information about this inspection

• The inspectors observed teaching in every classroom, some jointly with the executive headteacher. The inspectors observed the executive headteacher giving feedback to the teachers.
• The inspectors looked at a wide range of pupils’ work across the school.
• The inspectors held meetings with: senior leaders, the leader for the early years, the phase leader for key stage 1, leaders of special educational needs and/or disabilities, the leader of inclusion, a family support worker, the local authority adviser and three members of the governing body, including the chair.
• The inspectors conducted work scrutiny of pupils’ books with the leaders of English and mathematics of both key stages 1 and 2, and the science leader of key stage 2.
• Meetings were held with groups of pupils from Reception through to Year 6 and inspectors listened to pupils read.
• The pupils were observed during assembly, at breaktimes and during lunchtime.
• The inspectors looked at range of documentation including: the school’s self-evaluation; the school improvement plan; minutes of meetings of the governing body; the headteacher’s reports to the governing body; the school’s most recent information on pupils’ achievement; and information related to safeguarding, behaviour and attendance.
• The inspectors spoke informally to parents at the start of the school day. The inspectors also considered the nine responses to the free text service to parents. There were too few responses to the Ofsted Parent View questionnaire for the results to be published.
• The inspectors also considered the questionnaires completed by 26 members of the school staff.

Inspection team

Martin Finch, lead inspector Her Majesty’s Inspector Stephanie Innes-Taylor Her Majesty’s Inspector Heather Hawkes Hazel Henson

Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector