Narborough Church of England Primary Academy Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Improve the quality of teaching and learning by:
  • ensuring that the proposed changes to the teaching of mathematics are implemented and embedded effectively
  • making sure that all pupils are appropriately challenged, particularly in mathematics
  • developing the teaching of high-quality vocabulary, with teachers making sure that pupils accurately recall and understand the vocabulary learned.
• Improve pupils’ behaviour for learning by encouraging pupils’ curiosity and self-motivation to learn.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Good

• The headteacher and her deputy headteacher have led the school well since it opened as an academy.
• The senior leadership team has an excellent understanding of where the school is currently in its development. New methods for teaching writing and handwriting introduced in the last year have had a noticeable impact on improving the quality of pupils’ written work. Leaders have clear plans for further advances. The proven track record of work already completed successfully demonstrates leaders’ strong capacity to implement improvement.
• Leaders check the progress of all pupils against statements of what is expected at different ages. Staff are diligent in ensuring that pupils are considered as individuals. Personal plans are put in place where pupils are at risk of not making enough progress.
• The MAT provides regular challenge in terms of the school’s performance. It is proactive in putting in place effective support where needed.
• Leaders have stabilised staffing after initial high turnover. New starters are well supported in their development, for example by accessing personalised support and training packages from school leaders and the MAT.
• Middle leaders have recently had a greater impact on staff development, although this is an area that the school is working on further. The school is federated with two others and staff benefit from opportunities to work with others across the federation.
• Leaders take full advantage of the support and training offered by the MAT. Staff at all levels have accessed professional development. The school works closely with the MAT’s academies executive group principal, who provides coaching for leaders and support for teaching staff.
• Staff responses to the inspection survey indicated that all feel proud to work at the school. The vast majority feel well supported and that the school is well led and managed.
• The pupil premium grant is used effectively. Leaders assess disadvantaged pupils’ individual needs and identify any barriers to their learning. Funding is allocated by senior leaders, in consultation with a link governor to overcome these barriers.
• Pupils who have special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities and those with medical needs are planned for on a pupil-by-pupil basis, and funding is used effectively to support them. Pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities were observed to be integrated well into the mainstream classes and accessing the same curriculum as their peers.
• The physical education and sport premium grant is used well. All pupils in key stage 2 have had additional coaching on good sleep, eating and healthy lifestyles. Staff report that this has had a direct impact on increasing some pupils’ desire to take part in extra-curricular physical activities. Pupils have also benefited from additional resources to keep them active in the playground at breaktimes.
• Leaders have created a strong culture of respect for others within the school. Pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is core to the school’s strong ethos. Pupils were seen practising the values by supporting each other in lessons and by looking after one another at breaktimes.

Governance of the school

• The MAT’s board of trustees has delegated responsibilities to a local governing body, shared between the federation of three schools.
• Governance of the school is effective. Governors are involved fully in the school’s strategic management. Minutes of governing body meetings indicate a high level of challenge in holding leaders accountable for the quality of education.
• Governors have a good understanding of what the school’s current strengths and weaknesses are and have directly contributed to the concise school development plan, which reflects the school’s improvement needs accurately.
• Link governors play a full part in evaluating and planning for the use of additional funding, following advice from the senior leaders.
• The governors fulfil their statutory responsibilities for safeguarding children.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.
• There is a strong culture of safeguarding within the school. Leaders have ensured that a high proportion of staff are trained to be able to lead on child protection and that they implement the policy consistently.
• All staff have refresher training annually to keep them up to date with current requirements. The headteacher checks the understanding of staff after training to ensure that staff have understood the key information and to identify gaps in staff’s knowledge, for example through the use of quizzes. Staff spoken to were clear on what to do if they had concerns and were knowledgeable about specific risks to pupils.
• Senior leaders are persistent in ensuring that outside agencies take action where needed.
• Pupils talked to during the inspection all stated that they felt safe in school and were clear about whom they would go to if that were not the case.
• Senior leaders and governors ensure that they fulfil their legal duty to ensure that all appropriate pre-employment checks are made on members of staff and that these are recorded.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Good

• There is clear progression of teachers’ expectations and the standards achieved as pupils move through the school. Some teachers are highly skilled in particular subject areas and leaders have used this expertise to support others who are not so confident in these areas. Consequently, there is a shared expectation of high standards across subjects.
• In the last academic year, leaders had a key focus on handwriting and introduced a new cursive style. All teachers are consistent in their expectation that pupils will present their work to a high standard.
• Teachers have identified and targeted a group of boys who still need to make further progress in writing. For example, they wrote longer pieces and for different purposes across the curriculum as the year went on.
• Reading is taught well and all pupils make regular use of the well-stocked library. Phonics is taught systematically, resulting in all pupils reaching the standard set in the phonics check by the end of Year 2 in 2018.
• Teachers have received training in using the school’s preferred approach to teaching mathematics. However, this is not fully used where it could support both higher and lower attainers.
• Teachers have identified that pupils do not retain knowledge of all mathematical topics covered through the year to a high enough standard. They are planning to address this by introducing a daily ‘maths meeting’ to revisit content topics regularly. However, this is not yet in place.
• There is, rightly, an emphasis on using key vocabulary as part of teaching different topics. Teachers do not yet spend enough time on ensuring that pupils understand more complex words or are able to use them in other contexts. Pupils spoken to did not remember a great deal of key knowledge from their topic work from last year or vocabulary that would be transferable to other areas.
• Teachers’ planning for a variety of activities in humanities and science, both practical and written, means that the pupils enjoy their learning. Pupils spoke about how they had enjoyed the various subjects last year.
• Teachers assess pupils’ achievement in line with the school policy. They use this information well to plan next steps and any additional support needed.
• The majority of support staff work effectively alongside teachers to enable all pupils to access the curriculum. Teachers have made good use of the adults’ skills, for example in leading specific support such as additional work on spelling.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Good

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is good.
• All pupils spoken to stated that they felt safe in school.
• The school has clear processes in place to deal with any incidents of bullying. Pupils spoke positively about how leaders had dealt with such a situation.
• Pupils told the inspector that they would not tolerate any form of discrimination.
• The promotion of key values is a core part of the school’s curriculum. Pupils are aware of, and understand, the school’s values of ‘respectful, responsible, courageous, thankful and hopeful’.
• Pupils have been taught how to keep themselves safe online. They are able to explain what types of information they should not share.
• The relationship between adults and pupils in the school is one of its key strengths. All adults know each pupil. For example, at the start of the day, a member of staff was able to greet each pupil as they entered the site with familiarity and genuine welcome. Pupils then came in well settled. Parents spoken to said that staff really cared for their children.
• Pupils are friendly and polite. They were seen to play well together, in mixed-age and gender groups. The older pupils take pride in having a senior status, running a variety of clubs for younger pupils, including reading books and playing outside games on the playground. Reception children know that they can ask the Year 6 pupils for help at playtime.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils is good.
• Behaviour in classrooms is calm, with very little disruption.
• Pupils want to do the work they are asked to do. However, sometimes they are slow to get involved in activities or discussion.
• There are a few pupils who present challenging behaviour. Leaders have ensured that there are robust systems in place to support these pupils to improve their behaviour and for some pupils this has been highly successful.
• Attendance is broadly in line with the national average.
• The headteacher takes a proactive approach to engaging families whose children are at risk of being persistently absent. This has worked well, leading to a reduction in the percentage of pupils who have been persistently absent from school.

Outcomes for pupils Good

• The percentage of pupils achieving the expected standard or above at the end of key stage 2 rose substantially in 2018. All pupils in Year 6 achieved this standard in reading and the proportions in mathematics and in writing were broadly in line with interim national averages.
• In science, the percentage of pupils achieving the expected standard was higher than interim national averages at key stage 2 and in line with interim national averages at key stage 1.
• Progress between key stage 1 and key stage 2 is broadly at least as good as for other pupils nationally. Pupils’ work and in-house assessments suggest that progress has been strong since the school opened as an academy. Leaders have rightly identified that more pupils should make greater progress.
• The percentage of pupils achieving the expected standard or higher at the end of key stage 1 rose in writing and mathematics from 2017 to 2018. The percentage achieving this standard in reading remained broadly in line with the national average.
• The percentage of pupils reaching the expected standard in the Year 1 phonics check is in line with the national average. All pupils reached the standard by the end of Year 2.
• Although fewer children reached a good level of development at the end of the foundation stage in 2018 than in 2017, work seen from the children in Reception in 2017/18 showed that the majority had made good progress from their starting points.
• Work by pupils is virtually all presented to a high standard. Pupils spoke clearly about the new expectations introduced during last year and how they appreciated the rewards offered for good presentation.
• Writing has been a high priority for improvement. Pupils’ books from the last school year show most pupils making progress with their writing.
• Pupils across the school make appropriate progress in the mathematics work they have completed.

Early years provision Good

• Children’s work from the previous year and teachers’ assessments show that the curriculum draws on children’s interests. It also expands their knowledge and understanding of the world. Children learned, for example, about growing vegetables by growing their own and then visited a supermarket to find out where more exotic fruits came from.
• At the time of the inspection, Reception children had only been in school for a few days. They had settled into school life very quickly. They moved confidently around the school, playing with the older pupils at playtime and joining in assembly.
• Parents spoken to felt that their children had had a good start to school.
• Activities inside and outside provide a variety of interesting possibilities for the children to get involved in. Children develop their own games, for example, ‘mystery bandit’, combining physical movement, small-world toys and modelling clay. They are confident to talk to adults, asking them to take part in their game.
• Staff interact with children in a positive way. For example, staff ask questions such as, ‘What would happen if …?’.
• Leaders have identified the teaching of writing in early years as a priority for this school year as children’s development in writing was not as strong as in other areas of learning in 2018. The academy’s area executive principal has worked with the early years teacher on planning and making the best use of the activities on offer through the day to develop key writing skills. It is too soon to judge whether this work will improve the children’s writing.
• Teaching of number is engaging and interesting for the children, using both concrete and pictorial resources.

School details

Unique reference number 142466 Local authority Norfolk Inspection number 10056469 This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005. Type of school Primary School category Academy sponsor-led Age range of pupils 5 to 11 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 94 Appropriate authority Board of trustees Chair Mark Allbrook Headteacher Kelly Scott Telephone number 01760 338048 Website www.narborough.norfolk.sch.uk Email address head@narborough.norfolk.sch.uk Date of previous inspection Not previously inspected

Information about this school

• Narborough Church of England Primary Academy is part of a federation with two other local schools.
• The school converted to an academy in March 2016, sponsored by the Diocese of Norwich Education and Academies Trust.
• The school has a local governing body, which is responsible to the trust’s board of trustees.
• The school has a Church of England designation. The last section 48 inspection of religious education was in November 2015.
• The school is smaller than the average-sized primary school.

Information about this inspection

• The inspector observed learning in every class. Most of the observations were carried out jointly with the headteacher and/or deputy headteacher.
• A wide range of pupils’ workbooks were looked at by the inspector throughout the inspection.
• The inspector held meetings with the headteacher, the deputy headteacher, the leaders for English and mathematics and the early years teacher. The inspector also met with representatives of the local governing body, the MAT and the academy’s executive group principal.
• The inspector spoke to pupils informally in class and around the school, before school and at lunchtime to seek their views about the school. She also met with the school council formally to discuss their learning and school life.
• Pupils in Year 2 and Year 5 were heard reading and were spoken with about their reading preferences.
• The inspector scrutinised the school’s website and a range of school documents, including assessment information, spending of the pupil premium and the physical education and sport premium, the school’s self-evaluation and the school’s improvement plan.
• The 21 responses made by parents in this academic year to Parent View, Ofsted’s online questionnaire, were considered. The inspector also spoke to parents before school.
• The 14 responses to the staff questionnaire were considered.

Inspection team

Tessa Holledge, lead inspector Her Majesty’s Inspector