Bungay High School Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Leaders at all levels should continue to improve the quality of teaching by ensuring that:
  • further acceleration is made in the rate at which those pupils who need to catch up do so, and as many as possible attain the best standards of which they are capable in national tests
  • teachers’ feedback to pupils about how they are doing has full impact in showing them the best ways in which to improve their work
  • teachers further develop their questioning so that it requires pupils to reflect more deeply on their answers and to acquire deeper knowledge and understanding.
• Leaders of the 16 to 19 provision should continue the improvement in teaching so that:
  • teaching aspires to reach the standards of the best, and promotes further increases in pupils’ achievement in academic subjects
  • a higher proportion of those students who failed to achieve a C grade in English or mathematics at GCSE are successful in doing so when they re-take examinations in the sixth form.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Good

• The headteacher, trustees and governors are ambitious to further accelerate the improvements in standards that have been achieved since the last inspection. Leaders successfully communicate a clear vision to members of staff to promote a strongly aspirational culture with respect to both attainment and personal development. There is an explicit aim to become an outstanding school. School leaders and trustees know what is necessary to progress towards this goal. School development planning is detailed and realistic.
• School leaders are successful in recruiting suitably qualified staff and in retaining them.
• Teaching has improved since the previous inspection. A key factor is that teachers’ accountability has been significantly improved. Performance management of teaching now includes close attention to the sustained progress being made by pupils. Teachers do not move upwards on the salary scales without clear evidence that they have been successful in achieving good levels of progress for the pupils they teach. School leaders have set the bar high for this. Leaders are not afraid to take tough decisions: progression is never automatic or easily achieved. Teachers denied progression are given very clear reasons for this, together with explicit guidance for improvement.
• A large majority of parents consider the school to have improved since 2014 and to be continuing to do so. Parents’ written submissions identified as strengths of the school the rapidity with which pupils’ learning needs are identified and the care with which those needs are addressed. Parents also praised the school’s attentiveness to the physical needs of disabled students.
• School leaders have been meticulous in reviewing all aspects of teaching, learning and assessment. They have arrived at a position where their knowledge of how pupils progress is exceptionally detailed and accurate. This information is communicated to subject leaders and teachers and is used to ensure that teaching is successfully adapted to achieve improved rates of progress for pupils.
• School leaders accurately map trends and patterns in pupils’ achievement. This information guides the provision of additional support to any subjects where performance is not judged to be high enough. At the time of the previous inspection, predictions made by school leaders about examination results were over-optimistic. School leaders now rigorously assess the reliability with which predictions are made by each subject leader. GCSE results in 2016 – on the basis of the initial national information provided for checking – were predicted accurately at an early point in the school year and assessment is consistently precise.
• Similar rigour and diligence are applied to analysing the impact of the school’s work in promoting personal development. School leaders give a high priority to the promotion of respect and tolerance across the school. Members of staff consistently model calm and reasonable relationships.
• Pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural understanding is fostered both within the curriculum and through an extensive range of additional activities. Sporting opportunities are very broad – in one recent week there were 18 competitive fixtures. Participation in music-making is high: 150 pupils take instrumental tuition; choirs and orchestral groups are well attended. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme is used to give a high proportion of pupils the opportunity to contribute to their community and to build personal resilience through challenging expeditions.
• The curriculum is broad and balanced. School leaders have achieved significant increases in the proportion of pupils taking subjects that constitute the English Baccalaureate group (those subjects selected by the government for particular prominence).
• The school deploys its pupil premium funding carefully to achieve maximum impact and ensure that disadvantaged pupils achieve as well as they should. This group of pupils is showing rapidly increasing achievement as a result.

Governance of the school

• The trustees and governors had not anticipated the judgement made at the last inspection that the school required improvement. Since then, they have acted decisively to ensure that both the quantity and quality of information supplied to them by senior leaders have improved. They now check closely on the accuracy of performance information. They are able to interpret school performance information independently and provide a consistently high level of challenge to school leaders.
• Governors and trustees check closely on all aspects of the management of the school, including ensuring that additional funding such as the pupil premium grant is directed towards making the maximum impact on raising standards. Key aspects of the school all have a named link governor who provides a close overview of performance.
• Governors maintain a close overview of the decisions made by senior leaders with regard to the performance management of teaching, including the extent to which pay progression properly reflects the success achieved by teachers in improving progress.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.
• The required formal checks, records and logs for safeguarding are maintained to a high standard. All members of staff have received necessary training. Policies and school protocols are understood by members of staff and guide their actions. Newly appointed members of staff receive a thorough induction into safeguarding requirements and quickly approach the level of understanding demonstrated by longer-standing staff.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Good

• Teaching has improved markedly since the last inspection and is now good. Teachers hold high expectations. Typically, they make efficient use of time. Teachers create an atmosphere in which achievement is valued highly by pupils and they cooperate well, assisting each other in their learning. Pupils’ engagement in their learning is typically strong.
• Teachers plan efficiently, taking due account of pupils’ prior learning in the tasks they set. Teachers’ knowledge of the needs of individual pupils and groups of pupils has become detailed and continues to improve.
• Teachers are efficient in directing the work of those adults who support pupils’ learning. School leaders have introduced effective systems for ensuring that teachers’ planning is shared with support staff in a helpfully detailed way that shares planning and reflection on it. Plans for support are quickly and flexibly adapted as necessary to ensure that pupils receive the assistance they need to progress at the best rate.
• Homework tasks are closely connected to work in the classroom, reinforcing and extending learning.
• Teachers provide feedback to their pupils about how to improve their work that is often detailed but its impact is not checked as rigorously as the school’s policy requires. Lower-ability pupils are not always clear about how to implement the suggestions for improvement made by their teacher.
• Literacy is taught well across the curriculum. For example, the insistence on consistent and accurate use of technical language helps pupils to extend their vocabulary. This was seen in science: pupils broke down a complex bacterial name, illustrating its full scientific meaning but also showing how apparently elaborate words comprise different elements. Numeracy has prominence in planning but in a narrower range of subjects.
• Pupils demonstrate a keenness to learn. While teachers encourage this, their questioning is not consistently sufficiently sophisticated to encourage pupils to reflect carefully on answers and to acquire deeper knowledge and understanding. In mathematics, for example, questioning is not sufficiently effective in drawing from pupils the reasoning that will give them an appreciation of essential principles in the subject.
• The most able pupils are clear about expectations that they should complete additional activities further to extend their learning.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Good

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is good.
• On all three sites used by the school, pupils feel safe. Pupils very rarely experience bullying but know the forms it might take and are clear about necessary personal actions were they to witness an incident. Pupils are confident that any concerns reported to members of staff are taken seriously and that necessary remedial actions are quickly and effectively taken.
• When spoken to by inspectors, pupils expressed confidence in members of staff and great satisfaction with their school. Asked about what improvements they might like to see, pupils of all ages struggled to make any suggestions. Pupils are clear that their school is a welcoming community, and speak of the arrangements by which more senior pupils help newcomers. Pupils understand that people may present differently and reflect different cultures and lifestyle choices. They say clearly that theirs is an inclusive school.
• Those pupils who are members of the school council take pride in their role and are keen to represent the views of their peers. They enthusiastically grasp other opportunities to take on responsibility. Sports captains, for example, pair with Year 7 pupils to encourage participation in school teams. They also support the induction of the youngest pupils to the school.
• Pupils gain a thorough understanding of how to keep themselves safe, both in school and in the wider community. They increase their appreciation, appropriate to their ages, of how to judge risk sensibly, including with regard to the use of the internet and associated social media. Pupils understand the dangers of extreme views and of the types of actions that contradict laws and expectations in modern Britain.
• Pupils are encouraged in food technology and form tutorial sessions to consider healthy options in eating. They appreciate its role as part of a healthy lifestyle. The broad range of physical options, offered in physical education and in after-school clubs, allows a high proportion of pupils to find a sport or activity to which they would like to commit. Several pupils spoke of trying something in school that was now a firm interest and one that they followed out of school.
• Leaders attend assiduously to the specific needs of the small number of children in the care of the local authority, making sure that their academic progress is at least as good as that of other pupils.
• A full range of popular and fully subscribed additional activities and trips contribute well to pupils’ personal development. School leaders ensure that funding is made available to achieve the full participation of disadvantaged pupils.
• Pupils receive suitable careers advice and guidance, including a significant element from independent sources. This begins early in the school. Pupils in Years 7, 8 and 9 appreciate the programme that provides a forum for a broad range of guidance, including for key stage 4 option choices. Pupils in Year 11 confirm that they receive advice that embraces the full range of post-16 options, including apprenticeships and other opportunities beyond their own sixth form and the North Suffolk Skills Academy run by the school.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils is good.
• Pupils conduct themselves well. Courteous behaviour is the norm around the school during social times. Lunchtimes are orderly, with queueing etiquette respected.
• Pupils arrive at lessons ready to learn. A large majority of pupils demonstrate classroom behaviour of a high standard. Pupils told inspectors that a few lessons are affected by low-level disruption. Inspection evidence confirmed that low-level disruption is linked to the less effective teaching. More rigorous attention by senior leaders to low-level disruption has led to strategies which have been effective in improving pupils’ behaviour.
• Exclusions are rare and their incidence is falling.
• Attendance has improved and is broadly in line with the national average.

Outcomes for pupils Good

• There has been significant improvement in GCSE results. In 2014, the proportion of pupils gaining five grades at A* to C, including English and mathematics, was well below the national average. In 2015, results improved and were closer to the national average. The proportion of pupils making expected and more than expected progress in English matched national averages.
• Performance information for the 2016 national examinations confirms that there has been a steep rise in outcomes, with pupils attaining an above-average standard. This sustained improvement trend represents good progress from pupils’ differing starting points. Pupils’ attainment on entry, when compared to national figures, is significantly below average for all year groups and shows a downward trend. The improved attainment of Year 11 pupils in 2016 was reached from starting points that were particularly low.
• The 2015 results showed a sharp improvement from 2014, with pupils making good progress, particularly in English. Scrutiny of pupils’ work, together with detailed information from the 2016 examinations and the school’s own assessment information, confirms a further sharp rise in progress. Progress in mathematics dipped in 2015. An upward trend is now restored and current levels are high.
• Typically, pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities make good progress from their starting points. Those with a statement of special educational needs or an education, health and care plan make particularly rapid gains.
• Disadvantaged pupils made less progress than other pupils in 2015, with the difference more marked in mathematics. Performance information for 2016 shows improvement, with differences in achievement reducing significantly. This is confirmed by scrutiny of disadvantaged pupils’ work.
• The most able disadvantaged pupils make good progress. In 2015, in English, a higher proportion of the most able disadvantaged pupils made and exceeded expected progress than other pupils nationally. The proportions achieving these levels of progress in mathematics were close to the national averages.
• The Year 7 catch-up premium is used effectively. A high proportion of pupils join the school not having attained the expected standard at the end of Year 6. A large majority are making expected progress by Year 8 and Year 9.
• The most able pupils make good progress overall, although 2015 results in mathematics showed rates that were a little below average. Current pupils are making at least the progress expected from their starting points. High levels of attainment by the most able pupils are increasingly translating into the expected higher GCSE grades.

16 to 19 study programmes Good

• The sixth form has improved since the last inspection. Significant reorganisation has been initiated in order to raise the level of achievement, particularly in academic subjects. The new leadership of the sixth form has made considered changes to ensure that all the courses offered meet students’ needs more closely and give full opportunities for accreditation. Vocational subjects have been successful in outcomes for a sustained period but they continue to be further developed and offer students a broad choice of pathways in the sixth form.
• There has been a three-year trend of improvement in A-level grades, including attainment at the higher grades. Initial indications from national performance data are that 2016 examination results continue the upward movement between 2014 and 2015. The 2016 Year 13 cohort had performed relatively poorly in the 2014 GCSE examinations. Their A-level achievement represents a distinct acceleration in progress over two years.
• Teaching, learning and assessment are improving, but the best sixth form practice is not yet fully drawn upon to make sure that all subjects improve with the same rapidity. In 2015, the proportions of students who achieved at least a C grade in English and mathematics, having failed to do so in Year 11 and subsequently retaken the examination, were below average.
• The advice and guidance available to students promote aspiration but are also thorough and realistic. Consequently, students aim for suitably ambitious goals but do so with a clear idea of the courses to which they are suited and in which they have a genuine chance of attaining the necessary grades. Students spoken to by inspectors all had a clear idea of their future direction and how their current programmes of study linked to this. Guidance also includes programmes to broaden students’ wider cultural understanding and to assist in their preparation for life in modern Britain.
• Reviews in 2015 identified five subjects as underperforming. Four out of five improved their outcomes in 2016.
• Students are typically prepared well for their transition into the sixth form. School leaders take careful account of the implications of the open-entry policy for admission, making sure that arrangements suitably contribute to close monitoring of individual students’ progress. Any need for additional support is promptly detected and implemented. This support accelerates students’ development as sixth-form learners. One result was that between 2014 and 2016 the proportion of students remaining in the sixth form after Year 12 increased steeply.
• Sixth form students speak of a positive, aspirational atmosphere and of being encouraged to do well by their peers as well as by teachers.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 136998 Suffolk 10019618 This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005. Type of school Secondary School category Age range of pupils Gender of pupils Gender of pupils in 16 to 19 study programmes Academy converter 11 to 18 Mixed Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 1,047 Of which, number on roll in 16 to 19 study programmes 212 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Headteacher Telephone number Website Email address Simon Linger Angelo Goduti 01986 892140 www.bungayhigh.co.uk agoduti@bungayhigh.co.uk Date of previous inspection 24–25 September 2014

Information about this school

• The school complies with Department for Education guidance on what academies should publish.
• Bungay High School converted to a stand-alone academy in September 2011.
• The school runs the North Suffolk Skills Academy (NSSA) as part of the vocational curriculum. All current 16 to 19 students attending are on the roll at Bungay. They attend for a day each week at NSSA and follow a hairdressing course. There is also a Year 11 group attending. They are either on roll at Bungay or at other local schools. They attend part time at NSSA to follow either hairdressing or construction courses. This provision is in the last year of operation.
• The school does not use alternative provision.
• The school is larger than the average-sized secondary school.
• The very large majority of pupils are of White British heritage.
• The proportion of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities and the proportion supported through a statement of special educational needs or an education, health and care plan are above average.
• The proportion of pupils for whom the school receives the pupil premium is below the national average.
• The school meets the government’s current floor standard, which are the minimum expectations for pupils’ attainment at Year 11. National minimum standards were met in the sixth form.
• The headteacher has been in post since September 2014.

Information about this inspection

• The inspection team observed teaching and learning across the school.
• Meetings were held with senior and middle leaders. Other meetings were held with trustees and governors, including both the chair and vice-chair.
• The 80 responses to Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View, were considered. A proportion of parents responding also chose to make a written statement with the ‘free text’ online facility; these were also taken into account. Seventy-four members of staff completed the Ofsted survey of their opinions, which were also considered during the inspection. Inspectors also consulted Ofsted’s online survey of pupil opinion, to which there were 57 responses.
• Inspectors considered a broad range of school documentation. This included school records for current and past progress and attainment, attendance and behaviour records, minutes of governing body meetings and information about safeguarding and pupils’ welfare.
• Inspectors looked at pupils’ work and spoke to them about their learning. There were also meetings with pupils grouped by age and with the members of the school council. Inspectors observed pupils at lunch, at social times, arriving at school and moving about the building.

Inspection team

Paul Copping, lead inspector Gerard Batty Nick Asker Judith Wakeling John Wilson

Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector