Beulah Junior School Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Strengthen pupils’ outcomes further by ensuring that:
  • teachers set tasks in reading and mathematics that routinely build on pupils’ knowledge and help them to make consistently strong progress
  • leaders review and enhance assessment systems to further support teachers in precisely planning next steps for learners leaders take further effective actions to improve attendance and reduce the amount of learning time lost for pupils who are frequently absent from school.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Good

• The headteacher and deputy headteacher provide strong, stable leadership to the school. The headteacher knows her staff, governors and pupils very well. The school community expresses feeling safe in her capable hands. She inspires leaders and governors to do the very best that they can to improve all aspects of the school’s work. Collectively, they have supported a teaching workforce, with a wide range of experience, to improve their skills. As a result, pupils’ outcomes are improving swiftly.
• Leaders provide good professional development for staff. They have faced the challenges of recruitment by training new teachers and adopting an effective ‘grow our own’ policy. They have been successful in improving teachers’ skills in teaching writing. This is now a strength of the school. They have also ensured more consistency in the teaching of mathematics, which has led to strong outcomes for pupils. Leaders are sharply focused on improving pupils’ achievement in reading. Actions taken have begun to have a positive impact on pupils’ progress and attitude to reading.
• Leaders have rightly prioritised their curriculum development work to focus on improving reading, writing and mathematics. Pupils also enjoy work in a range of subjects. For example, they study artists and produce some beautiful art work. They enjoy science, music and a range of sports. The school topic-based approach to the curriculum has offered a good range of opportunities for pupils to write for a wide range of purposes, across a range of subjects. The school’s ‘SUPER’ values of ‘success, unity, pride, enjoyment and respect’ underpin the curriculum and are sharply evident through all aspects of the school’s work.
• Leaders have established an assessment system which helps them to evaluate the progress that pupils make across the school and the standards that they achieve in each year group. They work proactively with other schools to moderate their judgements. They have wisely decided to review their system further to ensure that it more accurately reflects pupils’ achievement from their starting points when they join the school in Year 3.
• Senior leaders support middle leaders well. Their roles continue to develop and add good capacity to the leadership team. Leaders use advice and support from the local authority well to help their self-evaluation and their planning for improvement.
• Leaders have an in-depth knowledge of individual pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities. Provision supports their needs well. Leaders and governors have ensured that pupil premium funding has helped to improve the achievement of disadvantaged pupils, many of whom make progress which is even better than their classmates. Leaders have ensured that the sports premium has enhanced pupils’ engagement and enjoyment of a range of sports.
• Leaders and staff are rigorous in their drive to improve attendance and reduce the number of pupils who are frequently absent from school. The availability of local services to support them in this work was limited during the last academic year. Leaders have recently secured the support of educational welfare officers to help them help families to get their children to school. The headteacher has a precise knowledge of every single pupil who is affected by poor absence. She and other leaders work together to decide on the most appropriate actions to help individual pupils attend more regularly. This has led to some improvements.
• The majority of parents who spoke with inspectors or completed the online survey were positive about the work of the school.

Governance of the school

• Governance is a strength of the school. Roles and responsibilities have been reviewed and restructured since the previous inspection. This, together with the recruitment of committed, skilled governors, has enhanced the effectiveness of governors in challenging and supporting the work of the school.
• Governors are insightful and unceasingly reflective. They are exactly what they evaluate themselves to be, that is, ‘a good, growing governing body’.
• Governors are highly committed to constantly improving their skills as governors. They already have a good range of skills which support them in their roles.
• They take their safeguarding duties extremely seriously and ensure that they are well informed about any potential risks to pupils in the local or wider community. They take effective action to ensure that appropriate suitability checks are made when new staff take up posts at the school.
• Governors can articulate clearly the many ways in which they have challenged and supported leaders to improve provision in the school. They are meticulous in their evaluation of the impact of the pupil premium spending to support the achievement of disadvantaged pupils. They rigorously check information about pupils’ achievement and help leaders to identify school improvement priorities.
• Governors are skilled at holding leaders to account while simultaneously nurturing and supporting their professional development. This is because they, too, embody the school’s values, such as respect and unity, which permeate the school.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.
• There is a strong culture of safeguarding in the school. Systems to record any safeguarding concerns are robust and record-keeping in relation to individual pupils is meticulous.
• Leaders are relentless in seeking the advice and support from appropriate external services, and they challenge local agencies when responses are not timely enough. All staff are clear on the school’s referral system and use it consistently.
• Checks made on staff are rigorous, and leaders take swift and effective action if any safeguarding concerns arise.
• Leaders thoughtfully adapt the curriculum to ensure that any emerging local safeguarding issues are explored, discussed and understood by pupils. They also ensure that pupils learn lessons from the rare bullying incidents which have occurred over time at the school.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Good

• Teaching is good and improving. This has led to improvements in pupils’ achievement over the past two years. Teachers are reflective and respond positively to training and professional development. They are committed to constantly improving their skills in order to improve pupils’ outcomes further. Teachers have a wide range of experience and skills. They value the support of leaders and of their peers. Newly qualified teachers and those in training are helping to secure a stable, committed and skilled workforce within the challenging context of a local and national recruitment crisis.
• There is a positive climate for learning across all year groups in the school. Pupils have boundless enthusiasm for learning. They are resilient and hard-working, even when teaching occasionally does not meet their needs.
• When teaching is at its very best teachers help pupils to work collaboratively and highly effectively in pairs and in groups. Teachers also ask probing questions to get pupils to explain their thinking and to challenge their misconceptions. This leads to some very strong progress indeed, particularly for the oldest pupils in the school.
• The teaching of writing is a strength. Teachers give pupils a wide range of opportunities to write for different purposes across a range of different topics. Pupils across the school are writing at standards which are expected for their age. They write confidently and at length. The most able writers are writing sustained, interesting, accomplished pieces. Teachers continue to work hard to support those pupils who enter the school in Year 3 without having secured a neat joined-up handwriting style.
• Teachers have consistently and effectively implemented the school’s mathematics programme. This has led to significant and sustained improvements to pupils’ outcomes in recent years. A high proportion of pupils in all current year groups are working at standards expected for their age. When teaching is at its strongest, the most able pupils are given challenges which help them develop and deepen their mathematical thinking. Not all teachers are equally confident in helping the most able or the least able learners to make consistently strong progress. For example, occasionally the least able learners are not provided with appropriate resources to help them to complete tasks. Similarly, the most able pupils are not pushed to achieve the best that they possibly can.
• Teachers have successfully implemented a reading programme which has helped them to ensure that pupils read regularly and often at school. Pupils enjoy the programme because they can access resources online after school. Parents also value this aspect of the school’s work. Teachers ensure that pupils who do not have access to the internet at home can access these resources at other times during the school day. Teachers are not yet equally confident in selecting additional reading resources to stretch the most able or support the least able readers. This means that sometimes books selected for pupils are either too difficult or too easy. This has an impact on the progress that some pupils make. This is reflected in the school’s assessment information, which shows that progress in reading is not yet as strong as in mathematics and writing.
• Some pupils benefit from reading ‘catch up’ or intervention sessions with teaching assistants. Inspectors observed that this noticeably builds up targeted pupils’ self-esteem as readers, helps to broaden their vocabulary and exposes them to good role models of how to be a successful reader.
• Pupils benefit from a range of subjects in addition to English and mathematics. They produce pleasing art work, and they enjoy science work. They also write confidently about historical and geographical themes. Science and topic work shows that sometimes activities are not consistently well matched to pupils’ abilities. Pupils enjoy music and taking part in a range of sports at school. They benefit from specialist teaching in these subjects.
• Pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities are well supported by adults in classrooms because leaders ensure that they keep a watchful eye on provision so that it meets their specific needs well.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is good.
• Pupils quickly gain confidence in themselves as learners when they enter Beulah Junior School. The supportive, nurturing climate for learning helps them to feel confident in evaluating their own strengths and weaknesses as learners. This helps them to work hard to improve and to achieve well.
• Pupils keenly celebrate the achievements of others. They smile happily when one of their classmates receives a reward for good work. Pupils rarely give up on the task at hand, and they seek help when they need it. They are self-motivated to be successful.
• Pupils chatted happily about life at school to inspectors. They are proud of their achievements. They never fail to exemplify the school’s values. They show tolerance, respect and genuine interest in those who are different to themselves.
• Pupils feel safe and cared for at school. They know that adults will respond swiftly and appropriately to any worries that they have.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils is good. Pupils play and learn well together. Their conduct around the school is excellent.
• Pupils are aware that there have been rare incidents of bullying because teachers make sure that lessons are learned from these rare events.
• Pupils’ attendance has remained just below the national average for the past couple of years and is currently broadly average. There are still a number of pupils who are frequently absent from school. This does not reflect the enthusiasm that pupils have for coming to school or the efforts that teachers make to help pupils get in to school. It is more an indication of the complex situations which families in the community find themselves in.

Outcomes for pupils Good

• In 2016, pupils’ standards at the end of Year 6 declined to well below the national average in reading, writing and mathematics. Progress of all pupils, including those who were disadvantaged, was below the national average.
• Overall attainment in reading, writing and mathematics at the end of Year 6 improved in 2017, and provisional information about the outcomes for 2018 shows that standards have further improved for all pupils, including those who are disadvantaged. Standards are broadly in line with the national average.
• The progress that pupils made in writing in 2017 was significantly above the national average. Provisional information shows that progress in writing remained above average in 2018. The books of pupils who are currently in the school show strong progress in writing in all year groups.
• The progress that pupils made in mathematics has remained well above the national average for the past two years. The progress of disadvantaged pupils is stronger than all pupils nationally.
• Pupils’ progress in reading is less strong and provisional information shows that in 2018 pupils’ progress across key stage 2 was slightly below average. Current pupils across the school are making better progress in reading because of the sharp emphasis that leaders and teachers are placing on it.
• Current Year 6 pupils are making strong progress across all subjects. They are being well prepared for the next stage of their education.
• Disadvantaged pupils are making similar or better progress to their classmates. Pupils who have individual support for their SEN and/or disabilities are making good progress from their variable starting points.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 101712 Croydon 10056699 This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005. Type of school Junior School category Age range of pupils Gender of pupils Community 7 to 11 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 336 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Headteacher Telephone number Website Email address Shona Campbell Vivienne Luniak 020 8653 4921 www.beulahjuniors.co.uk office@beulah-jun.croydon.sch.uk Date of previous inspection 22 23 October 2014

Information about this school

• Beulah is a larger-than-average junior school. It has three classes in each year group.
• The school shares its site with Beulah Infants School.
• The proportion of pupils who are eligible for the pupil premium funding is above the national average.
• The proportion of pupils who speak English as an additional language is well above the national average.
• The proportion of pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities is above the national average.
• The largest ethnic groups in the school are Black or Black British African and Black or Black British Caribbean.

Information about this inspection

• Inspectors observed learning in all year groups. Observations were undertaken with the headteacher, the deputy headteacher and the special educational needs coordinator.
• Inspectors met with members of the governing body.
• Inspectors met with a representative of the local authority.
• Meetings were held with groups of pupils to discuss their learning and their views on the school.
• Inspectors met with leaders to discuss their roles and the impact of their work.
• Inspectors heard pupils read, and talked to pupils at breakfast club, in the lunch hall, as they moved around the building and on the playground.
• Inspectors examined a range of school documents, including information on pupils’ progress across the school, improvement plans, curriculum plans and checks on the quality of teaching. They examined school records relating to safeguarding and behaviour.
• Inspectors spoke with parents and took account of the 17 responses to the Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View.
• Inspectors scrutinised a sample of books to see what progress pupils have made across a range of subjects.

Inspection team

Ruth Dollner, lead inspector Lisa Farrow Ellie Whilby

Her Majesty’s Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector