Clenchwarton Primary School Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Continue to improve outcomes for all groups, including the most able, by ensuring that teachers ask probing questions and set work at the right level, so that pupils are challenged consistently to do as well as they can.
• Improve pupils’ progress overall in reading and spelling, in particular, ensure that boys achieve as well as girls.
• Continue to work closely with parents, to raise attendance rates further and to reduce the potential for incidents of persistent absence.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Good

• Senior leaders have succeeded in creating a safe, positive learning culture and a happy school environment. Through a period of staffing changes and conversion to academy status, they have secured the commitment of both staff and pupils to achieving the high standards they set.
• Strong leadership of teaching, learning and assessment has ensured that teaching across subjects continues to improve. Regular checks on pupils’ progress in lessons and through evaluations of the quality of work in pupils’ books ensure that leaders have an accurate understanding of teaching strengths and what needs to improve. Performance management systems are effective and suitably focused on securing high-quality outcomes for all pupil groups.
• Subject leaders’ improvement plans are clear and closely linked to pupils’ progress. Through subject network groups and cross-moderation events with other schools, teams ensure that their skills are up to date and their assessments of pupils’ work are accurate. Staff at all levels, including teaching assistants, have good access to continuing professional development opportunities through the trust, the local authority and external agencies. The recent appointment of a new assistant headteacher, with a subject specialism in modern foreign languages, has further enhanced leadership capacity and the range of subject expertise available in school.
• Senior leaders’ curriculum planning ensures that pupils have access to a wide range of subjects, including modern foreign languages, art, music, history, geography, technology and science. Cross-curricular topic work, for example linked to whole-class reading books, provides good opportunities for pupils to write at length in different subjects. High-quality displays in classrooms and corridors provide useful reminders of key learning points and are a celebration of pupils’ work.
• Popular after-school clubs, stimulating topics, exciting educational trips and visits to places of worship make an effective contribution to pupils’ good spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. Regular ‘aspirations’ events include visits from guest speakers, for example vets, businesses, technology and health professionals. These events are suitably focused on raising aspirations and providing pupils with enriching experiences to prepare them well for later life.
• Senior leaders and governors ensure that the additional physical education and sport funding is used effectively to continually improve physical education provision in the school. Both staff and pupils benefit and develop their expertise by working alongside skilled sports and dance coaches. Pupils are encouraged to lead healthy lifestyles through participation in sporting events and regular personal, social and health education.
• Provision for pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities is effective and well managed. Funding is suitably targeted at improving the progress of the growing number of these pupils in the school. Assessments of individual pupils’ needs are accurate. Progress is carefully tracked, by leaders and specialist staff, against learning targets set. The checks they make ensure that pupils get the level of support and challenge they need. Consequently, these pupils make good progress, wherever their journey begins.
• Leaders and governors are taking effective action to ensure that disadvantaged pupils make the progress they should, from their different starting points, across subjects. The proportion of pupils eligible for the additional pupil premium funding in the school is below the national average. Typically, disadvantaged pupils make good progress. However, the number of pupils in this group is low, and very low in some year groups, and so makes national comparisons less reliable.
• Although the leadership team has been successful in raising expectations and improving teaching standards and pupils’ behaviour, leaders are not complacent. They know that there is more work to be done in ensuring that teaching is consistently strong across subjects and for all pupil groups.
• With a focus on continual improvement, leaders are developing the way they present information about the school’s performance to governors. This change aims to increase further governors’ engagement in whole-school monitoring processes.
• Work is under way to improve pupils’ reading standards further, in particular to diminish the differences between boys’ and girls’ progress in reading and to ensure that all pupil groups, including the most able and disadvantaged pupils of all abilities, are challenged consistently in lessons to achieve as well as they can.
• Leaders are working hard to make sure that pupils attend school regularly. While current attendance levels, overall, are similar to the national average, the persistent absence of a minority of disadvantaged pupils remains a concern.
• While most parents are very positive about their child’s experience in school, a few said that they felt that some aspects of the way the school communicates information to them could be improved further.

Governance of the school

• There have been significant changes to the membership of the governing body over the last year, including the appointment of a new chair of governors. Governors and trustees are very clear about their role in holding leaders to account for the school’s performance. They take their statutory responsibilities very seriously.
• Governors and trustees bring a wide range of skills to their work. They are well focused in ensuring that the spending of additional funding, for example funding to support disadvantaged pupils and pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, is closely linked to improving the progress of all pupil groups.
• Governors have a good understanding of day-to-day life in the school. While a number of them are new to their role, they are not afraid to challenge when pupils’ progress falls short of the high expectations that are now well established across the school.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.
• Staff, at all levels, give high priority to keeping children safe. Securing pupils’ well-being and ensuring safer staff recruitment practices are entrenched in all aspects of the school’s work. Most parents feel that children are safe and well looked after. Senior leaders have ensured that there are sufficient trained staff in place to deal with concerns as they arise. Induction training for new staff and update training events for all staff are regular and effective. Where necessary, swift action is taken, including close working with external agencies, to protect vulnerable pupils from harm. School leaders are tenacious in following up responses from the local authority when progress in addressing reported concerns is slow.
• Leaders work hard to ensure that parents, as well as pupils, understand the risks to children associated with the use of the internet, mobile phones and social media. Pupils explained to inspectors about how they are taught to keep themselves safe online. They were very clear about not sharing information over the internet with people they did not know.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Good

• Effective leadership and a clear commitment from teachers have resulted in well-focused improvements to the quality of teaching, learning and assessment across the school. Good progress is seen in the work in most pupils’ books and in lessons, as well as in senior leaders’ routine checks on teaching quality in all subjects and year groups.
• Teachers know their pupils extremely well, and this contributes very effectively to the positive working relationships that are a strong feature of day-to-day life in the school.
• Teachers have appropriate subject knowledge. Lessons are usually well planned and interesting. Activities are designed appropriately to engage, and so extend, pupils’ learning. For example, in Year 6, the topic based on the book ‘Children of Winter’ provided a highly effective framework to develop pupils’ knowledge and understanding in English language, literature, reading and comprehension, as well as extending their writing in English, history and geography.
• In an English lesson, pupils were enthralled as they examined the contents of the ‘plague doctor’s box’. In small-group discussions, they drew widely on the recent experience of their visit to a re-enactment ‘plague village’. In feeding back, they responded very well to the teacher’s questions on how the contents, including feathers, herbs, spices and a variety of stones with coin-sized indentations, were used.
• This lesson provided inspectors with a strong example of the effectiveness of the school’s focus on improving pupils’ reading through book-led, themed topics. Year 6 pupils were very conversant with the book’s characters and content, as well as the associated historical and sociological implications of the story.
• In a Year 1 lesson, pupils learnt effectively as they were encouraged to use ‘sound talk’ to help them blend the sounds that letters make, to help them read.
• Teachers’ assessments are used appropriately to identify additional support for pupils who need extra help. Regular checks are made to ensure that assessments are accurate and that pupils are making the progress they should. Teachers work collaboratively with colleagues from other schools, and through subject networks, to confirm the consistency of their evaluations of the quality of pupils’ work.
• Teaching assistants work very well with subject teachers to check that interventions for all groups, including disadvantaged pupils and pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, are working well and to agree the next steps.
• Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities have access to good specialist help and extra support. Consequently, they make good progress from their different starting points.
• In meetings, pupils explained to inspectors how they are encouraged to read regularly. Most of them said that they enjoy reading and could explain the reasons why different types of books were of particular interest to them.
• Teachers set homework in line with the school’s guidelines. The school’s marking and feedback policy has recently been revised. This is to ensure an increasingly consistent focus on good-quality guidance to pupils about their progress and what needs to improve. While changes are grounded in continual improvement, leaders are rightly mindful of the need to avoid adverse impact on teachers’ workloads.
• Because their teaching is effective, most teachers manage pupils’ behaviour in lessons well. Consequently, pupils enjoy their time in class and are eager to learn.
• In the few instances where inspectors observed some low-level chatting or pupils not getting on with their work, this was typically linked to the level of challenge and/or their interest in what teachers had planned for them to do.
• Occasionally, teachers’ questions are insufficiently probing to ensure that pupils are supported to build deep enough responses to help them to make rapid progress to the next level. For example, some questioning in lessons observed by inspectors was limited to closed questions starting with ‘what’, rather than ‘how’, ‘when’ or ‘why’.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Good

Personal development and welfare

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils is good.
• In this friendly and welcoming school, pupils understand what is expected of them and so the environment is calm and purposeful.
• Pupils are polite and courteous to visitors, school staff and each other. Typically, they are attentive in lessons and learn to cooperate with each other very well. They speak enthusiastically about their learning with visitors, teachers and their peers.
• The school’s rewards system is popular with pupils and they feel that teachers use it fairly. They are eager to receive the thank-you cards that accrue points, for example towards opportunities to choose from a selection of books. Both pupils and staff feel that behaviour in the school has improved.
• In lessons, most pupils focus their attention on what teachers ask them to do and work hard. The generally good working relationships established between staff and pupils make a positive contribution to day-to-day life in the school.
• Occasionally, when teachers do not make their expectations clear enough, or if the activity is insufficiently challenging, pupils lose interest and do not complete as much work as they could.
• Effective systems are in place to make sure that pupils attend school regularly. Overall attendance is similar to the national average for primary schools but lower for a minority of disadvantaged pupils. Leaders are working closely with parents to ensure that they are aware of the importance of avoiding unnecessary absence.

Outcomes for pupils Good

• From their different starting points, current pupils are typically making good progress across a range of subjects.
• Better teaching and enhancements to the provision in early years have ensured that outcomes for children have improved. The proportion of children reaching a good level of development has risen from below the national average in 2016 to above in 2017.
• In Year 1, current assessment information shows that the proportion of pupils achieving the expected standard in the national phonics screening check has risen sharply to above the national average, after a significant dip in 2016.
• The proportion of pupils reaching expected standards and greater depth of learning in reading, writing and mathematics, at the end of key stage 1 in 2016, was above the national average.
• In 2016, in key stage 2, more pupils than nationally achieved the expected standard, or above, in reading and writing, but pupils’ progress in mathematics dipped. Leaders’ swift action to improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment secured better outcomes in mathematics by the end of key stage 2 in 2017.
• In-school assessment information, work in pupils’ books and observations of pupils’ learning suggest that these improvements are set to continue, across year groups, in the current academic year.
• In key stage 2, Pupils’ good progress in writing is evident in the interesting cross-curricular topic work covering, for example, English, history, geography and, to some extent, mathematics and science. A greater proportion of the most able pupils, in both key stage 1 and key stage 2, have consistently attained the higher level in writing than pupils with similar starting points nationally.
• Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities make good progress across the school. High expectations and effective identification of these pupils’ needs ensure that swift action is taken to address these needs or if pupils start to fall behind. Improvements to in-school assessment systems and the information about pupils’ progress mean that leaders are more accurate in evaluating the extent to which planned actions are securing good rates of progress.
• The proportion of pupils eligible for the additional pupil premium funding is below the national average. Within some year groups, numbers are very low and so make national comparisons less reliable. Leaders take care to ensure that adults are available to provide effective support and to remove any barriers to learning identified. The school’s assessment information and the most recent test results show that, overall, disadvantaged pupils make similar progress to other pupils nationally.
• Across both key stages, there are some variations in the extent of pupils’ progress in reading. Although, overall, progress is broadly in line with national expectations, girls significantly outperform boys in reading by the end of key stage 2.
• Recently introduced strategies to continue to improve pupils’ reading skills include revised approaches to guided reading, book-led themes to writing and an increase in the range of books available in the library. New library books offer up-to-date and interesting themes, including themes of particular interest to boys. During the inspection, pupils from Year 3 and Year 6 read confidently and competently with inspectors.
• In the most recent key stage 2 test results in English grammar, punctuation and spelling, pupils’ attainment in spelling was not as strong as in other areas of English. A new spelling scheme has been introduced. This is aimed at making a positive difference to pupils’ ability to spell accurately and improving their understanding of why it is important.

Early years provision Good

• The provision in early years has improved and is now good. Early years leaders have been well supported by senior leaders in taking swift action to raise standards after a dip in children’s outcomes in 2016.
• Children typically start school with knowledge and skills levels similar to those of most other children of their age. Most of them, including disadvantaged children and children who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, now make good progress from their different starting points.
• Current assessment information shows that, from well below national expectations in 2016, the proportion of children achieving a good level of development has risen significantly and is now slightly above the national figure.
• The teaching of early reading has also improved. From the outset of their Reception Year, some children had already been identified for more advanced reading challenges and others for additional support.
• Changes to the early years environment, both indoors and outdoors, and in the way children’s individual learning is tracked have made a significant contribution to improving children’s outcomes.
• Children are prepared effectively for the next stage in their education. Teachers plan for children’s learning appropriately, based on regular and accurate assessments of what children can do and the things they need to improve. Activities set are purposeful and linked carefully to children’s needs and interests. These interests are captured initially through the routine home visits leaders make before children start school.
• Planned topics are designed to stimulate children’s learning from the outset. For example, pets and dinosaurs were identified as popular favourites of children starting this year and so activities have been refined to ensure that these themes are included.
• Adults interact with children very well. In most cases, they ask suitably probing questions which encourage children to extend their learning and language development effectively.
• Children’s safety and welfare needs are of high priority. Most parents feel that their children are well cared for. Open and caring working relationships are established between the early years team, parents and children. Parents speak very positively about the good start their child gets in the Reception Year.
• On joining the school, children settle into routines quickly. They behave well and play imaginatively together, taking turns, sharing and being kind to each other. As one parent said, ‘There is a welcoming feel to the school, my child is treated as an individual. I have every confidence in those who work with him.’

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 141465 Norfolk 10036242 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 Academy converter 4 to 11 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 191 Appropriate authority Chair Headteacher Telephone number Website Email address Board of trustees Lesley Bambridge Joanne Borley 01553 775035 www.clenchwarton.norfolk.sch.uk/ head@clenchwarton.norfolk.sch.uk Date of previous inspection Not previously inspected

Information about this school

• Clenchwarton Primary School has fewer pupils on roll than the average-sized primary school. It converted to become an academy in September 2014 and is part of the West Norfolk Academies Trust.
• The school meets requirements on the publication of specified information on its website.
• The school complies with Department for Education guidance on what academies should publish.
• Most pupils are of White British heritage.
• The proportions of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, and of those who have an education, health and care plan, are above national averages.
• The proportions of pupils from minority ethnic backgrounds or who speak English as an additional language are below the national average.
• The school meets the government’s current floor standards, which set the minimum standards of attainment and progress by the end of key stage 2.

Information about this inspection

• Inspectors observed learning in every class. Some of the observations were carried out jointly with members of the school’s senior leadership team. In addition, inspectors looked at pupils’ work in books from every year group.
• They listened to pupils read and spoke with them about their reading.
• They asked pupils informally about their views of the school as they observed them at play and lunchtimes, as well as in small-group meetings.
• Inspectors also met senior leaders, subject leaders, teaching staff, the chair of governors and three other representatives of the governing body, including trust-appointed governors.
• Inspectors reviewed the school’s website and looked at a wide range of documents. These included school policies, assessment information, minutes of meetings, the school’s own self-evaluation, improvement plans, and records of pupils’ behaviour, attendance, safeguarding and child protection.
• Inspectors considered 30 texts from parents and their responses to the Ofsted online questionnaire, Parent View. They also spoke to parents before and after school. In addition, the views from 125 questionnaire responses from pupils and 27 responses to the Ofsted questionnaire for school staff were taken into account.

Inspection team

Christine Dick, lead inspector Jane Dooley Her Majesty’s Inspector Ofsted Inspector