Seely Primary School Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Improve the effectiveness of leadership and management by:
  • building on the improvements made by ensuring that all leaders demonstrate the necessary sense of urgency in improving the areas for which they are responsible
  • applying greater attention to detail to the school’s improvement plans by ensuring that they include measureable targets, regular milestones and clear lines of accountability
  • ensuring that the school’s improvement plans pay sufficient attention to the progress of pupils who need to catch up in their learning, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds
  • strengthening the procedures to check and evaluate the use and impact of the pupil premium in raising outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, particularly the most able pupils and the children in the early years
  • improving the quality of information that senior and subject leaders provide to governors about the pupils’ achievements and the impact of the measures taken to improve the school.
• Improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment, by ensuring that:
  • teachers tackle pupils’ misconceptions effectively
  • pupils, and particularly the most able disadvantaged in key stage 1, are given work that is well matched to their needs so that all pupils behave consistently well in class and make the progress they need to
  • pupils understand how, precisely, they can improve their work
  • teachers and teaching assistants insist on high levels of presentation in pupils’ work in all subjects and across all year groups. An external review of the school’s use of the pupil premium 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 have not ensured that strategies to improve teaching have been consistently effective in securing good outcomes for all groups of pupils.

• While leaders monitor lessons and the work in pupils’ books each term, this monitoring has not had sufficiently rapid impact in tackling inconsistencies in pupils’ progress in lessons and over time.
• Leaders’ plans for improvement lack consistently clear success criteria and the necessary milestones to enable regular enough checks on whether the actions taken are bringing about the improvements intended. This has hindered the pace of improvement.
• Leaders have not used the assessment of pupils’ progress and attainment over time as effectively as they needed to. Consequently, they have not fully addressed the differences in the standards between the disadvantaged pupils at the school and those of other pupils nationally.
• Leaders ensure that disadvantaged pupils benefit well from the excellent enrichment opportunities that staff provide, particularly in the arts. However, until recently, they have not assessed the impact of this funding in raising the achievement of disadvantaged pupils, including the most able disadvantaged pupils.
• Leaders have not provided governors with enough information about key aspects of the school’s performance. Often, leaders’ reports focus on the actions taken but do not pay enough attention to the impact of those actions. This means that leaders and governors are not as clear about the school’s performance as they should be.
• Leaders are increasingly effective in assessing pupils’ progress and attainment, particularly in English and mathematics. Because of the recent introduction of a new assessment tracker, teachers are now responsible for updating assessment information with pupils’ progress and attainment. This system has strengthened the school’s performance management arrangements because leaders are now more able to hold teachers to account for pupils’ achievements and to challenge teachers where pupils are falling behind.
• The school’s curriculum engages and motivates pupils. It promotes healthy living and pupils’ well-being and safety effectively. Leaders have fostered a culture of tolerance and respect in the school. For example, they have implemented an effective system of peer mediators and restorative justice, should pupils fall out. Pupils of different ages whom inspectors met told them how they supported the school’s approach and that they are confident that adults will help them to solve any issues, should they occur.
• Leaders ensure that all pupils, and particularly disadvantaged pupils, are encouraged to develop their artistic skills to the full. Leaders ensure that staff enrich the curriculum with, for example, opportunities for pupils to learn Spanish and musical instruments and to perform music and drama to a range of audiences. Year 6 pupils who met with an inspector were rightly proud of their achievements in the arts and keen to point out their work, which was on display throughout the school.
• Leaders have fostered strong links with the local community and this further enhances the school’s very effective work to develop pupils’ artistic skills and knowledge. Pupils regularly sing at a local care home, attend and display their work at local art exhibitions and are contributors to the annual Nottingham ‘Light Night’ event.
• Leaders promote strong links with parents. ‘INSPIRE’ days have been successful in promoting calculation methods in multiplication and division, as well the new phonics system that staff teach pupils in key stage 1. Parents told inspectors that they find these events helpful in providing information about what their children are learning at the school and how they can help them further.
• Leaders ensure that pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is good. The school promotes equality and fundamental British values effectively. Pupils recently enjoyed an USA-style ‘presidential election’ to help with their understanding of democracy. Leaders enhance pupils’ knowledge of different religions and cultures by, for example, arranging visitors to assemblies to inform pupils about Sikhism, and for pupils to visit local places of worship.
• The funding received by the school to promote physical education (PE) and sport is used effectively. A specialist teacher has been into school to teach pupils and to train teaching staff. Around 100 pupils have benefited from two recent sports festivals and there are plans for increased inter-school competitions. Further plans are in place to improve the playground markings so that pupils can play more sport on site.
• Effective leadership of provision for pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities has ensured that these pupils achieve well, particularly in key stage 2. While the special needs coordinator is currently on maternity leave, temporary leaders have begun to review pupils’ progress with parents. They have an increasingly clear picture of the next steps required to ensure that staff maintain the progress of pupils.

• Leaders work very effectively with external agencies, including behaviour support services, the child and adolescent mental health service and the local autism team. These outside agencies provide effective training for teaching assistants as well as teachers.
• Support from the local authority has not been as effective in securing rapid school improvement as it needs to be. Staff training, particularly in mathematics, has not had the impact intended because leaders and local authority officers have not checked pupils’ work carefully enough to ensure that this training has made a difference to pupils’ skills.

Governance of the school

• Governors are ambitious for every pupil to succeed and for the school to improve. They have a good understanding of many aspects of the school. However, they are not as clear about the impact of leaders’ actions to improve pupils’ academic achievements as they are about the impact of the arts on enriching pupils’ lives. This is because leaders do not provide enough information about the outcomes of particular groups, including disadvantaged pupils.
• Governors visit the school regularly and value these visits for the insight they provide into the workings of the school. Minutes of meetings of the governing body show that governors ask challenging questions of leaders, based on the information they receive. They are not complacent about the role they play in improving the school and have used a skills audit to identify and address gaps in their expertise.
• Governors have undertaken appropriate safeguarding training, including in areas such as extremism and in the need to recruit new staff safely. As a result, they have a good understanding of the risks to pupils and the need to ensure that staff protect pupils against harm.
• There are clear procedures in place for the appraisal of leaders and teachers. Governors are clear that they should only award pay increases, where applicable, when these are justified by improvements in staff performance.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.
• The school’s arrangements for safeguarding pupils meet statutory requirements. The designated staff are knowledgeable and clear. Robust systems are in place to respond to any safeguarding concerns. Records are comprehensive and show that staff work with parents to help keep pupils safe, and take swift action should the need arise. The statutory checks on staff suitability for working with children are thorough, and safeguarding training for all staff is appropriate and regular. There is a strong safeguarding culture within the school.
• Parents and pupils believe that the school is a safe place. Pupils described to inspectors how the school prepares them for emergencies and keeps them safe through security measures, such as the securely locked doors. Pupils talk knowledgeably about how to stay safe when using the internet, ensuring that they keep personal details to themselves.
• Leaders know the importance of analysing incidents regularly and closely so that they can quickly identify any trends and address issues briskly. They have recently replaced a previously complicated method of recording behaviour incidents with an effective and more efficient central system.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Requires improvement

• Teachers do not consistently ensure that the work given to pupils is well matched to their abilities. Consequently, the most able pupils, in particular at key stage 1, do not make as much progress as they should.
• Pupils are not always clear enough about what, precisely, they need to do to improve their work. Consequently, teachers miss opportunities to deepen and embed pupils’ knowledge and skills.
• Not all teachers have consistently high expectations of pupils’ presentation of work. In some books, teachers accept untidy work and do not challenge basic errors. They do not consistently address, for example, the incorrect use of capital letters and inaccurate spellings of the names of the months, when pupils are recording the date on pieces of work. Where teachers tackle these errors, they do not follow up rigorously and, as a result, pupils often continue to make the same mistakes.
• Where teaching is strongest, pupils are appropriately challenged and teachers respond quickly to their developing learning needs. For example, in one mathematics lesson seen, the teacher recognised quickly that a group of pupils had grasped the concept of ‘more than’ and ‘less than’. The teacher adapted the lesson to further stretch pupils’ learning through the introduction of ordering decimals. This enabled pupils to develop and deepen their thinking.
• Pupils of different ages use their phonic skills to good effect when trying to pronounce unfamiliar words. The majority of pupils told inspectors that they enjoy reading and that they also read at home, and there is time set aside for reading during the school day. They could talk about their preferred authors with, for example, Roald Dahl being a particular favourite in Year 2.
• The majority of teaching assistants are used effectively across the school to boost the learning of all pupils. In one particularly strong example observed, the teaching assistant encouraged pupils to think of their own adjectives, to sound them out using their phonic knowledge, and then to write them down without adult help.
• In the majority of classes, pupils benefit from opportunities to use and apply their developing mathematical skills. For example, in a Year 5/6 class, the pupils worked together to calculate percentages and fractions. The teacher skilfully encouraged the pupils to use a range of strategies to solve the problems. Pupils clearly enjoyed this challenge, behaving well and developing a greater understanding during the lesson.
• Teachers plan regular opportunities for pupils of all ages to write at length. For example, during a Year 2 lesson, an inspector observed the pupils writing letters to Santa. In their writing, the pupils built upon their existing knowledge by adding noun phrases and adjectives to their work. The pupils were motivated to complete this task and, as a result, improved their skills effectively.
• There are positive relationships between all adults and pupils in the school.

• Classrooms are calm and orderly, and an appropriate environment for learning. The colourful displays around the corridors and in classrooms are a strength, with staff ensuring that they promote a wide range of curriculum areas.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Requires improvement

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is good.
• The school’s effective work to promote pupil’s personal development and welfare starts as soon as pupils enter the school. Pupils are taught to value and respect the views and opinions of others. This is evident in the harmonious atmosphere that exists around the school.
• Pupils throughout the school look smart in their school uniforms and take obvious pride in wearing it. They are polite and courteous to adults, for example waiting in doorways to allow others to pass. Pupils use their good manners when talking to adults, including those who are visitors to the school.
• The pupils that inspectors spoke with feel that school is a safe place. Pupils speak confidently regarding keeping themselves safe online as well as having a good understanding of the different forms of bullying.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils requires improvement.  While pupils mostly behave appropriately, this is not consistent. When teachers do not give them activities that are matched appropriately to their needs, pupils lose concentration and then engage in off-task behaviour.

 Standards of lunchtime behaviour are higher in key stage 1 than key stage 2. The dining hall for the younger children is calm and orderly with pupils eating their lunch quietly. Older pupils are noisier in their dining hall, with a very small minority shouting and not putting their trays away.  Pupils value the well-established systems to deal with fall-outs and disagreements. They believe that the school’s system of restorative justice and peer mediation works well. Pupils can explain the systems clearly and understand how they operate. Pupils also say that they have faith in staff to quickly step in and resolve any more serious incidents, although these occur rarely.  Racist and bullying incidents are extremely rare. The pupils are tolerant of one another and readily accept that others may come from different backgrounds, lifestyles or have different religious views to their own.

• Pupils’ attendance, having previously been too low, is improving. Initiatives such as a free breakfast club and a tougher approach to challenging parents for pupils’ absences are having an impact. The attendance officer has strong systems in place to help monitor patterns of absence and to build relationships with those families whose children do not attend regularly enough. Attendance rates are currently on track to match at least the national average by the end of the year.

Outcomes for pupils Requires improvement

 Published results show that, in 2014 and 2015, pupils, including disadvantaged pupils, made progress in reading, writing and mathematics that was in line with that of other pupils nationally. However, recent outcomes have fallen. In 2016, pupils in key stage 2 made significantly less progress compared with other pupils nationally, in reading and writing.

 The school’s current internal assessment information and work in books show that progress in reading, writing and mathematics is inconsistent across the school.

 Some pupils, particularly the most able disadvantaged, in key stage 1 do not achieve as well as they should in reading, writing and mathematics.

• Outcomes in the Year 1 national phonics screening check have risen over the last three years. The performance of disadvantaged pupils showed a particularly strong improvement in 2016. Overall, however, the proportion of pupils passing remains below the national average.
• Current school information shows that the majority of Year 1 pupils are on track to achieve the expected standard for pupils of their age in reading.
• Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, a high proportion of whom are also disadvantaged pupils, make good progress from their starting points.
• Pupils for whom English is an additional language make strong progress, especially in writing and mathematics.

Early years provision Requires improvement

• The early years provision requires improvement because leaders do not use the pupil premium funding consistently well to accelerate the development of disadvantaged children. Leaders are not as effective as they should be in ensuring that disadvantaged children receive the additional support and guidance to which they are entitled. Consequently, this group of children do not make the rapid progress they need to in order to catch up with non-disadvantaged children, nationally, from their low starting points.
• Children benefit from indoor and outdoor provision that staff have improved since the last inspection. Teachers and teaching assistants’ practice is improving over time because of carefully planned and well-targeted training opportunities.
• Adults plan tasks that are matched well overall to the interests and abilities of the children, and this helps them to make progress during lessons. Adults use skilful questioning techniques to extend children’s learning and understanding. During a lesson that an inspector observed, children were engrossed in a task because there was a range of activities that engaged and stimulated them. They were all busy trying to answer the week’s question, which was, ‘How can we find out about autumn?’.
• Relationships between adults and children are very positive and this enables children to settle into learning quickly. The transition into the early years is well organised and structured. Children are therefore ready to start learning when they arrive. Parents are very positive about the start their children make in the early years and appreciate the good communication links they have with the school.
• Teachers and teaching assistants carry out regular and appropriate assessments on the children. Children’s learning journey documents show that adults regularly undertake a wide variety of assessment tasks. These ensure that teachers can plan effectively for the next steps in children’s learning. Parents are also involved in informing staff when their child has made progress at home, so that teachers can adjust their planning accordingly. Leaders provide suitable challenge for the most able children.
• From their low starting points, the majority of children make good progress and are well prepared for the next stage of their education. Although the proportion of children who achieve a good level of development is currently below that seen nationally, this figure is increasing. Children make particularly good progress in writing. For example, those children who are able to demonstrate early mark making in September are able to form letters and write simple sentences by December.
• Safeguarding in the early years is effective. All statutory requirements are met.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 139430 Nottingham 10019578 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 525 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Co-headteachers Telephone number Website Email address Orlando Hampton Jacqui Newton and Sally Pearce 0115 9153780

www.seely.nottingham.sch.uk admin@seely.nottingham.sch.uk

Date of previous inspection 26–27 November 2014

Information about this school

• The school meets requirements on the publication of specified information on its website.
• The school opened in September 2013. It was formed from the amalgamation of two previous schools, Seely Infant and Nursery School and Seely Junior School, both of which closed.
• The school is twice the size of the average-sized primary school.
• The proportion of pupils eligible for the pupil premium funding (additional funding from the government for children known to be eligible for free school meals or who are looked after by the local authority) is well above average.
• The proportion of pupils from ethnic minority groups is well above average.
• The proportion of pupils who speak English as an additional language is above average. The pupils come from a wide variety of backgrounds.
• The early years provision is part time in the Nursery and full time in the Reception classes.
• The school meets the government’s floor standards, which set the minimum requirements for pupils’ attainment and progress in reading, writing and mathematics by the end of Year 6.

Information about this inspection

• Inspectors observed lessons in all year groups and examined a wide variety of pupils’ books from a range of subjects. These activities were sometimes accompanied by senior leaders.
• Inspectors held a range of meetings with the co-headteachers, deputy headteachers, subject- and other leaders, governors, and a representative from the local authority. They held meetings with groups of pupils and spoke to pupils in lessons and around the school and listened to them read.
• Inspectors scrutinised a range of documents, including the minutes of meetings of the governing body, current assessment information provided by the school, the school development plan, plans written by the subject leaders for English and mathematics, and records relating to safeguarding.
• Inspectors talked to parents before school started, examined the results of 80 Parent View questionnaires and took into account a recent parent survey carried out by the school.

Inspection team

Peter Stonier, lead inspector Stephen McMullan Heidi Malliff Janis Warren

Her Majesty’s Inspector Her Majesty’s Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector