Oakington CofE VA Primary School Ofsted Report

Full report

In accordance with section 44(2) of the Education Act 2005, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector is of the opinion that this school requires significant improvement, because it is performing significantly less well than it might in all the circumstances reasonably be expected to perform.

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Improve the quality of leadership and management by ensuring that:
  • leaders urgently improve safeguarding procedures and implement strategies to ensure that concerns about pupils’ welfare are acted on promptly and appropriately
  • governors’ oversight of safeguarding systems is improved by thorough monitoring of leaders’ arrangements for reporting, recording, and referring concerns, both within school and, when necessary, to appropriate authorities
  • required evidence to support the effective management of the school’s single central record is accurately recorded and properly filed
  • any injuries to pupils are logged appropriately so that leaders can reduce risks and ensure that parents are informed of any incidents
  • leaders and governors improve the school’s relationship with parents, via an urgent review of communication arrangements and systems for responding to concerns
  • leaders and governors resolve staff concerns about leadership quickly
  • subject leaders are provided with appropriate guidance so that they use pupils’ progress information with confidence to improve the quality of teaching further.
• Improve pupils’ personal development, behaviour and welfare by ensuring that:
  • all staff understand the expectations for behaviour and maintain them consistently
  • instances of poor behaviour, including bullying, are carefully and accurately recorded so that adults can respond effectively and monitor behaviour well.
• Improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment, by ensuring that all teachers:
  • provide mathematics work which routinely supports pupils to apply their knowledge and skills more quickly, particularly those with average or higher prior attainment
  • provide pupils with more opportunities to practise and develop high-quality literacy skills in subjects across the wider curriculum
  • support pupils to read more accurately and expressively. An external review of the school’s 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 Inadequate

• Leaders have not successfully created a culture of effective safeguarding. They have not fulfilled their duty to safeguard pupils and therefore the quality of leadership and management in this key area of the school’s work is inadequate.
• Systems and procedures for safeguarding pupils and promoting their welfare are not effective. Procedures within school for reporting and recording concerns about children are not always followed. In some cases, the reporting of concerns has been very slow, and in others it has not occurred. In addition, leaders have not consistently referred concerns to the appropriate authorities.
• The management of information about safeguarding concerns or pupils’ welfare is not good enough. Communication with parents, carers and the appropriate authorities is not recorded accurately or, sometimes, at all. As a result, leaders lack clear, shared oversight of their work and actions they may have taken to address concerns.
• Leaders’ and governors’ evaluations of safeguarding, behaviour and welfare are not accurate. This is because of weaknesses in the management of information which prevent leaders and governors from understanding the full picture.
• Leaders have not established effective arrangements for logging incidents of poor behaviour and bullying or making the link between some minor injuries which occur and the behaviour which has led to them. This prevents leaders from responding effectively to patterns of poor behaviour and, in some cases, informing parents about problems which arise and how their child was hurt.
• Leaders have not successfully established suitable systems for recording and handling parental concerns. Consequently, leaders are often unable to respond to parental concerns effectively or in a timely manner.
• The school has experienced important changes in the current academic year, owing to federating with another school. The headteacher has become executive headteacher of two schools and is working in both. During this period, and prior to it, many parents and some staff have lost confidence in the leadership of the school.
• Almost three quarters of the parents who responded to Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View, disagree that the school is well led and managed. A similar proportion disagree that leaders respond effectively to their concerns, including those about behaviour and bullying. Some parents express concern about the quality of communication from the school, which they describe as routinely inaccurate and unhelpful.
• A large minority of staff report concerns about the school. Half of the staff who responded to the Ofsted questionnaire do not agree that they are treated with fairness and respect. Almost half disagree that the school is well led and managed. Similarly, a third disagree that leaders support staff well in managing behaviour, or that behaviour is managed consistently well.
• Leaders, including the deputy headteacher and subject leaders, have demonstrated strengths in other areas of their work since the previous inspection. Following a sharp decline in key stage 2 progress in 2017, leaders, governors and staff have successfully focused on improving teaching, particularly in reading and writing. Because of this improvement, pupils’ progress is good in those subjects and in mathematics.
• Leaders and governors have set relevant priorities for improvement and have put in place effective arrangements for checking on their progress. Leaders and staff are held to account effectively by governors for their performance.
• Subject leaders’ contribution to school improvement is largely effective. They have introduced successful initiatives to strengthen the teaching of reading, writing and mathematics. They monitor pupils’ work accurately and use their findings to advise teachers on how to further improve their teaching. However, subject leaders’ use of assessment information to steer and focus improvement is not sharp enough.
• Leaders’ arrangements for improving teaching are effective. Senior leaders accurately assess teaching quality and use this knowledge to select relevant training and set clear performance targets.
• Leaders set pupils challenging targets which reflect their expectations for pupils to achieve well. Senior leaders have established appropriate monitoring processes to ensure that pupils do not fall behind.
• Leaders make skilful use of additional funding to support disadvantaged pupils, and this has helped improve the progress these pupils make. Leaders have an accurate view of the barriers to learning that disadvantaged pupils experience and plan personalised additional support to help them overcome these.
• Leaders have made important improvements to the curriculum and pupils’ progress has improved. Because of improved preparation across the different subjects, including English and mathematics, pupils develop their knowledge and skills to greater depth. This has raised their achievement in literacy, numeracy and communication. One good example is in English, where the quality of writing for different purposes has improved. A wide variety of sports experiences and extra-curricular clubs further promote pupils’ personal development.
• Additional funding is used well to support the improvement of physical education and participation in competitive sports. Teachers have improved the quality of their own sports teaching and there are several sports clubs established at the school. Several school teams take part at a local competitive level and the number of pupils involved in competitive sports has risen.
• Pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is promoted well. Pupils can explain their school’s values and their own beliefs, owing to useful assemblies and the quality of teachers’ questioning across different subjects, including religious education. As a result, pupils have an appropriate understanding of, and respect for, the different beliefs and cultures within the United Kingdom.
• The local authority has provided the school with support which has helped confirm leaders’ priorities for their improvement work.

Governance of the school

• Governors have not fulfilled their statutory duty to ensure that the school takes suitable steps to safeguard its pupils. They have not been aware of some of the safeguarding failures occurring within the school.
• Governors have been too reliant on the information provided by leaders responsible for safeguarding and external advisers commissioned to review this aspect of the school’s work. However, they have very recently checked for themselves the validity of the picture provided and have now accurately identified some failings.
• Governors have also accurately identified flaws in leaders’ arrangements for responding to concerns and communicating with parents. However, development work in this area has been very slow.
• In other areas of their work, governors have made an important contribution to school improvement. They are dedicated, and suitably experienced for their role. Governors have an accurate view of most aspects of the school’s performance and the remaining areas for development in teaching and the wider curriculum. They actively monitor leaders’ improvement work and have successfully held the headteacher to account over the quality of teaching, learning and assessment and pupils’ progress.
• Governors hold leaders to account for the way in which they use additional funding to help disadvantaged pupils attend well and make good progress.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are not effective. The main reasons for this have already been explained in this report.
• The school’s single central record of checks on staff suitability to work with children is complete. However, governors agree that some documentary evidence, which is needed to verify the checks, is unavailable.
• All staff currently in the school are suitably trained to fulfil their safeguarding roles and they understand how to raise concerns within school.
• Pupils are provided with appropriate advice about how to stay safe when using the internet, online games and communication technology. They can explain possible risks and how to reduce them.
• Pupils report that there is at least one adult to whom they can speak if they have any anxieties or concerns.
• Procedures for checking on the suitability of visitors to enter the school are effective.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Good

• Following a recent decline in pupils’ progress at key stage 2, the quality of teaching, learning and assessment has improved. Previous difficulties have been overcome, especially in reading and writing. As a result, pupils are taught well and are making good progress.
• Teachers set high expectations for pupils’ learning. Teachers use their strong subject knowledge and accurate assessment information to plan challenging work for pupils of different abilities. This was clear in a Year 6 religious education lesson, where pupils were required to compare the beliefs of Christians and Hindus. Because of effective teaching and assessment, the most able pupils were able to lead their own in-depth discussion of theological concepts about both religions.
• Questioning is a strength of teaching in all year groups. Teachers challenge pupils to use their knowledge thoroughly. For example, in a Year 4 mathematics lesson, the teacher’s skilful questioning helped pupils to use statistics well to interpret and evaluate the popularity of different cinemas.
• The teaching of new vocabulary and spelling has improved. Teachers introduce new words and concepts skilfully and deepen pupils’ understanding of, and confidence with, language. As a result, the range and sophistication of pupils’ routine vocabulary has improved.
• Teaching assistants are deployed appropriately to support pupils’ learning. Teaching assistants are provided with accurate plans and information about the pupils they support, including those who have special educational needs (SEN) and/or abilities. Teaching assistants skilfully check on pupils’ understanding as they work and use questioning to provide suitable challenge. Consequently, the pupils they support make good progress.
• Reading is taught well. Pupils have developed a wider range of skills, including drawing inferences from texts and offering accurate evaluations of characters. Despite these improvements, a small number of key stage 2 pupils do not read as expressively as they could, because they do not use punctuation to set a suitable pace and tone to their reading.
• Writing is taught well over time. Because of improvements made to teaching, pupils can write effectively for different purposes, including diaries, letters, fiction, non-fiction, biographies and poetry. Pupils also spell with greater accuracy and use grammar and punctuation well. Higher proportions write to greater depth in English. However, in some subjects, which include geography and science, teachers do not provide activities that enable pupils to develop their writing skills.
• Mathematics teaching is effective. Teachers skilfully plan activities to support pupils of different abilities to apply their knowledge to more challenging work. As a result, pupils can tackle calculation work efficiently. In addition, teachers’ promotion of reasoning skills has made pupils far more confident in problem-solving. However, in some classes, teachers do not ensure that pupils, including the most able, attempt the more challenging work quickly enough, and this slows the progress that pupils make over time.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Requires improvement

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare requires improvement.
• Some pupils and parents lack confidence in the school’s ability to tackle bullying incidents quickly and effectively. Some pupils report that bullying persists for too long after it has been reported in school.
• Almost 25% of parents who responded to Ofsted’s online questionnaire do not agree that their children are well cared for, and over 40% disagree that the school deals effectively with bullying.
• All staff seek to promote positive and caring relationships between pupils. The very large majority of pupils demonstrate consideration and respect for each other. They also have an accurate understanding of what bullying means and the forms it can take.
• Pupils are committed to their school and to serving others. They willingly lead school clubs and actively serve as school council members. Pupils have used these valuable experiences to bring about improvements to school life and have led successful campaigns for charitable causes.
• Leaders and staff ensure that pupils are provided with appropriate guidance on safe use of the internet and when using communication technologies. As a result, pupils demonstrate a clear understanding of the potential risks and how to avoid them.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils requires improvement.
• Since the previous inspection, there has been a decline in pupils’ behaviour and conduct at the school. A large minority of parents and some staff expressed concern about poor behaviour. Almost 30% of parents who responded to Ofsted’s online questionnaire disagree that behaviour is managed consistently well. The proportion of staff who disagree that behaviour is managed consistently well is higher.
• While little poor behaviour was seen, other inspection evidence demonstrates behaviour is not consistently good around the school over time. A minority of pupils are unable to make the right choices when seeking resolution to disagreements with others, or in classroom situations when they experience difficulty. Many pupils report that low-level disruption disturbs their learning on a weekly basis or more frequently.
• Teachers and leaders consistently promote the school’s main values, which are ‘confidence, achievement, respect and environment’. Most pupils respond well to this message, enjoy school and show positive attitudes in lessons and work hard. They show consideration to each other, cooperate positively and offer respect to their teachers. They are also very polite to visitors.
• Many pupils find their work interesting and are proud of their achievements. For example, in key stage 2 lessons, pupils eagerly shared their artwork with the inspector and were keen to explain how much their techniques had improved. Equally, in assembly, they sang with clear enthusiasm.
• Pupils move between classrooms sensibly and are well behaved in assembly and the lunch hall.
• Attendance is higher than average and persistent absence is now rare. Leaders have worked successfully to reduce the absence of pupils whose previous attendance was low. Parents and carers make sure that their children attend regularly and punctually. In the current academic year, the persistent absence of disadvantaged pupils has also significantly reduced.

Outcomes for pupils Good

• The progress of pupils currently in the school is good. Following a decline in progress in key stage 2 in 2016 and 2017, leaders accurately identified weaknesses in pupils’ learning in reading and writing and the need for more pupils to reach higher standards in mathematics. Because of improvements made to teaching, pupils’ progress has significantly improved in the different year groups.
• In recent years, the very large majority of Year 1 pupils have achieved the expected standard in phonics. Pupils use their phonics knowledge confidently. Pupils currently in Year 1 are continuing to make good progress. Assessment records show that there are no significant differences between the achievement of different groups of pupils.
• The progress of pupils currently in key stage 1 is good and reflects similar good progress over time since the previous inspection. Taking account of their starting points in the early years, the proportions of pupils achieving expected standard and greater depth in the different subjects represent good progress. Current work and assessments show strengths in all subjects, and particularly in writing in Year 1.
• The progress of pupils currently in key stage 2 is good. In 2016 and 2017, progress declined in reading and writing, and was well below average. Progress in mathematics was average. The school’s accurate assessment information and work by current pupils show that they are making good progress, and standards are at least average or higher in all year groups. Far more pupils are reaching the higher standard. Some pupils with average prior attainment are not reaching the highest levels of knowledge and skills of which they are capable in some subjects, including mathematics.
• There are few disadvantaged pupils currently in the school, which prevents meaningful comparisons with national results. Inspection evidence shows that disadvantaged pupils are making good progress from their individual starting points. In key stage 2, their progress reflects the same rapid improvement as that of other pupils, while their progress in early years, phonics and key stage 1 has been good over time.
• Pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities are making good progress when compared with other pupils with similar starting points. This is because they are assessed accurately and the teaching and support they receive helps them achieve well.
• The most able pupils are making good progress. In recent years, their progress declined in key stage 2. However, current assessment records, pupils’ work and lesson visits demonstrate they are making strong progress in all year groups. However, some teachers do not consistently ensure that the most able pupils select work which sufficiently challenges them to apply their knowledge and develop their skills as thoroughly as they could.
• Inspection evidence shows that pupils are making good progress in art, design and technology, religious education, science, history and geography.

Early years provision Good

• Good leadership and provision in the early years ensures that children make good progress and, as a result, they are well prepared for Year 1.
• Children in the early years make a good start to their schooling. Most children currently in Reception joined the school with knowledge and skills typical for their age or better, although some had lower starting points in writing and number skills. The school’s accurate assessment records indicate that the very large majority are making good progress, with 78% of children reaching a good level of development.
• Leaders have put in place appropriate arrangements to help children make a good start to early years. Children who enter school with lower starting points are quickly identified for additional help, and skilful teaching helps children of all abilities succeed.
• Parents are closely involved in working with teachers to help their children settle in, and teachers take account of a range of information to ensure that they have an accurate picture of each child. While parents report their total confidence in staff and leaders in early years, some report concerns about the quality of communication from senior leaders about induction arrangements.
• The learning environment within the classrooms and outdoor areas offers interesting and engaging learning opportunities and is organised to support the different early learning goals. Children enjoy their learning activities.
• The quality of teaching, learning and assessment is good and is carefully organised to help children learn continually. A good example of this was seen in counting work which encouraged children to use model animals to answer sums through accurate use of number patterns. Another example was seen in a writing session, where the teacher skilfully helped children of higher ability to complete high-quality sentences about the ‘busy spider’.
• Adults monitor children’s learning well. Teachers and teaching assistants adjust their activities and work to make sure that children are learning effectively, and any weaknesses are addressed. This has been particularly important in the improvement of children’s early handwriting, letter formation and numbers. Children have been given good-quality support to improve their fine motor skills when needed.
• Children’s conduct is positive. They work well together and have been encouraged to help one another and share resources and equipment.
• The early years environment is tidy, safe and well organised. Equipment is stored correctly and there are displays which show the strengths of children’s work. Staff monitor behaviour and safety carefully. Parents report their strong approval for the provision.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 110833 Cambridgeshire 10046073 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 Voluntary aided 5 to 11 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 136 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Headteacher Telephone number Website Email address Edmund Buss Sally Daggianti 01223 232328 www.oakingtonschool.org.uk head@oakington.cambs.sch.uk Date of previous inspection 16–17 October 2014

Information about this school

• The school is smaller than the average-sized primary school.
• The school entered into a federation with Dry Drayton Primary School in January 2018. The headteacher is executive headteacher of both schools.
• Most students are from White British backgrounds.
• The proportion of disadvantaged students is below average.
• The proportion of students who have SEN and/or disabilities is below average. The proportion of students with an education, health and care plan is below average.
• The school offers a breakfast and after-school club.

Information about this inspection

• The inspector gathered evidence from lessons in all year groups across the school, including some jointly observed with senior leaders.
• The inspector looked at pupils’ work in lessons across all year groups and a sample of pupils’ books and folders, some of which was undertaken jointly with senior leaders, and subject leaders responsible for mathematics and English.
• The inspector scrutinised the school’s arrangements for the safeguarding of pupils and the logging and management of any concerns arising about their behaviour, welfare and safety. The inspector also checked the school’s single central record.
• The inspector scrutinised leaders’ arrangements for communicating with parents and responding to concerns raised by parents.
• The inspector looked closely at a wide range of further documentation, including: the school’s self-evaluation; improvement plans; leaders’ use of the pupil premium; curriculum information; records about the attainment and progress of pupils and attendance; leaders’ checks on the quality of teaching; performance management arrangements; and the work of governors.
• The inspector held a range of meetings with the school’s leaders, including: the headteacher, who is also the senior designated lead for safeguarding; the deputy headteacher; and subject leaders responsible for developing the quality of teaching and learning in literacy and numeracy. Meetings were also held with senior leaders and subject leaders, to ascertain the progress of pupils in the school.
• Meetings were held with representatives of the governing body, including the chair and the governor with oversight over safeguarding arrangements.
• Meetings were also held with representatives from the school council, clubs and additional pupils from key stage 2. Throughout the two days, the inspector spoke informally with pupils about their experiences, their learning and their safety. The inspector also listened to pupils from key stage 2 as they read from their current reading texts. He also observed pupils around the school and during breaktimes and lunch.
• The inspector evaluated 78 responses to Parent View, Ofsted’s online questionnaire, including 51 free-text responses, and the responses of 12 respondents to Ofsted’s online questionnaire for staff, including 7 staff comments. He also met with parents on each day of the inspection.
• During the inspection, governors reported that they had undertaken their own independent review of the school’s single central record on 2 July 2018.

Inspection team

David Turner, lead inspector

Ofsted Inspector