The Baird Primary Academy 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 leadership, management and governance of the school by ensuring that:
  • effective provision is in place to make certain that all groups, including the most able, disadvantaged pupils and those who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, make good progress
  • the capacity of all leaders is developed so that they contribute effectively towards school improvement and strengthen the quality of teaching and improve pupils’ outcomes.
• Improve teaching, learning and assessment to secure good progress for all pupils across the range of subjects, by:
  • raising expectations of what pupils can do and the progress that they can make
  • ensuring that teaching actively promotes positive learning attitudes, such as resilience and independence
  • using assessment information to provide suitably challenging lessons that match pupils’ learning needs
  • providing staff with access to training and support to improve their subject knowledge.
• Raise the proportion of children who reach a good level of development by the end of early years so that more children are prepared well for Year 1, by:
  • providing training for staff so that they are knowledgeable about the early years curriculum
  • supporting staff to use assessment well so that children’s learning builds on what they already know and can do
  • ensuring that the indoor and outdoor environments are consistently appealing and engaging across early years provision.
• Improve pupils’ attendance by working closely with parents, so that it becomes at least in line with the national average for primary schools.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Requires improvement

• Over time, leaders have not been able to secure sufficient improvement in pupils’ progress and in the quality of teaching to address amply the declining standards in the school. However, leaders now share a clear passion to secure improvement. They have a realistic view of the school’s work. Leadership roles have been redefined and are clear and understood. Senior leaders have evaluated the school’s procedures and brought about significant change to school systems so that the weaknesses of the past are not repeated.
• Leaders have introduced a plethora of new initiatives to promote consistency and forge a united momentum towards better standards. Nevertheless, new initiatives have not had sufficient impact in redressing the underachievement that exists in every year group.
• There is a clear focus on raising standards and accelerating progress, improving teaching and developing assessment and tracking systems. Leaders have taken decisive and swift action to appoint new permanent teachers in order to provide stability for pupils in the classroom following the departure of the majority of teaching staff in September 2016.
• In the past, there has been insufficient focus by school leaders on checking the impact of teaching on pupils’ learning and progress. Current leaders have implemented rigorous procedures to monitor the quality of teaching in the school. Leaders are making sure that staff receive appropriate training to improve their expertise. They have secured professional support from highly effective teachers and directors of learning from other schools within the trust. However, the quality of teaching is not strong enough yet to bring about rapid improvement.
• School leaders’ ability to exert a positive impact on the quality of teaching is variable. For instance, feedback given to teachers does not consistently help them to improve. Nonetheless, subject leaders are beginning to develop the skills they need to provide feedback that improves the quality of teaching and the progress that pupils make. These middle leaders have exciting new ideas for the future development of their subjects but they are too new to have influenced standards.
• Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities are supported well and make good progress towards meeting their individual personal targets. However, as with other groups in the school, the progress of this group is too slow in reading, writing and mathematics.
• Leaders have undertaken a review of the impact of additional funds provided by the government to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. In the past, funding was not spent effectively to improve outcomes for this vulnerable group. Leaders have introduced new strategies and hold staff firmly to account for the progress that these pupils make. Although still variable between classes and subjects, there is improvement in the progress that disadvantaged pupils are making. However, attainment remains very low compared to pupils nationally. Leaders have a clear commitment to all pupils having equal opportunity to succeed, but given that outcomes are inadequate, this is not achieved in reality.
• Effective use of sports funding has had a positive impact on pupils’ eagerness to participate in sport and has improved their knowledge of how to stay healthy.
• Leaders are making certain that pupils receive a broad and balanced curriculum, enhanced by trips and visits that engage and motivate pupils. A new curriculum has been introduced based around high-quality text and ensures that a love of reading is firmly rooted in all aspects of pupils’ learning.
• Leaders have made sure that the school’s behaviour policy and school aims reflect British values. They have introduced a school’s code of conduct, known as ‘KERRI’ (meaning, kindness, excellence, respect, responsibility and independence), which the vast majority of pupils live by. Strategies to manage behaviour are applied consistently by staff. In a short space of time, leaders have brought about a noteworthy, positive change in pupils’ behaviour and their attitudes to learning.
• Leaders have galvanised staff support, all of whom say that they enjoy working at the school. Staff are united in their belief that senior leaders have improved the school in a short space of time. This has been noticed by some parents, one of whom wrote: ‘Since the new management team took over the school has turned a corner and is steadily improving.’ Staff feel valued. They understand the goals of the school and are bonded in their ambition to raise standards.
• The drive, determination and skills of senior leaders and evident signs of recovery mean that the school has the scope for further and sustained improvement. Leaders have secured effective partnerships to build leadership capacity and improve the quality of teaching. For example, directors of learning from Hollington Primary Academy are sharing their own expertise to develop middle leaders, to help them secure school improvement. Staff say that this is having an impact on developing their confidence to improve.

Governance of the school

• Governors add to the capacity of the school to improve. They evaluate their own effectiveness and put plans in place to enhance the way that they challenge and support leaders to raise school standards. They share school leaders’ drive and enthusiasm to make the school a better place for the pupils in their care.
• Hastings Academy Trust has evaluated the support they provide for schools in times of uncertainty. The school experienced significant disruption to leadership and management during the past academic year. This turmoil affected pupils’ progress and achievement, and the school floundered. This was despite interventions put in place by the trust. The trust has worked alongside the Department for Education (DfE) to make sure that this scenario is not repeated. As a result, the trust has a greater ability to secure improvement, increasing the human and financial resources available to the school. Most importantly, trustees have secured effective senior leaders who have the experience, expertise and drive to improve the school’s effectiveness.
• Together, local governors and the trust bring a wealth of capability and professional knowledge to the school.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective. School leaders have ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and records are detailed and of high quality.
• Staff are acutely aware of their duty to protect pupils, and leaders monitor the effectiveness of the school’s procedures extremely well. Governors take their responsibility to protect pupils very seriously and evaluate the strength of safeguarding throughout the school. The processes to recruit staff are secure and the single central record is well maintained.
• Leaders commission external audits to evaluate their safeguarding practice and they respond swiftly to any guidance that is given. Staff are well trained and have up-to-date knowledge to ensure that pupils are safe and protected from wider risks presented beyond school.
• Pupils understand what constitutes bullying and the different forms that it can take. The majority of pupils are adamant that incidents of bullying are infrequent and that when they occur they are dealt with by staff. The overwhelming mood of pupils is one of happiness and positivity about the school.
• Pupils understand the importance of equality and tolerance. They express their views eloquently. A pupil captured their thoughts in writing, which was displayed in a corridor, by stating: ‘I believe in Jesus, but it is okay if someone believes in a different god. It’s interesting.’

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Inadequate

• The quality of teaching, learning and assessment is inadequate because pupils are rarely provided with work that is matched well to their abilities. As a result, pupils do not make the progress of which they are capable.
• Teaching does not cater well enough for different groups of pupils, including pupils who are disadvantaged and pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities. Teaching does not address different pupils’ learning needs and does not enable some pupils to overcome barriers to learning. Consequently, different groups of pupils are not achieving well. Additional interventions are in place but it is too soon to measure the impact on pupils’ progress.
• Teachers’ expectations of pupils’ achievements are not high enough, particularly of the most able pupils. Assessment information is not used well to support pupils’ learning and help them to build on what they already know and can do. Sometimes, pupils become distracted and fail to engage because work is too easy or too difficult for them.
• Mistakes made by pupils in their work are not consistently picked up by adults in order to address errors that have become habitual over time. Consequently, inaccuracies have become embedded in pupils’ minds, impeding their ability to make progress. There is very little evidence that teachers are skilled in adjusting their teaching or activities in response to pupils’ learning.
• Pupils rely too heavily on the support given to them by adults because they do not have the skills and knowledge they need to tackle new work confidently and on their own. This is because of poor teaching over time, which has resulted in huge gaps in pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding. The least able pupils are particularly reliant on additional support to access their work.
• The school’s own evaluation of the quality of teaching shows that teaching is slowly improving, but is too variable to uplift swiftly the progress that pupils are making.
• Mathematics lessons are beginning to routinely develop pupils’ problem-solving and reasoning skills. Tasks are not adapted to best effect. Pupils’ books show that the most able pupils often complete repetitive exercises rather than apply their knowledge to more complex investigations. Less able pupils do not have the prior knowledge in mathematics to apply their learning to solve problems on their own.
• Poor reading skills inhibit pupils’ ability to access written problems. There are few opportunities to undertake investigative learning in mathematics. Pupils are not provided with the physical tools they need to help them understand mathematical concepts. As a result, pupils’ progress in mathematics is limited. As with other subjects, teachers’ subject knowledge is not consistently strong enough to ensure that the skills pupils require are built upon progressively.
• The quality of teaching phonics has not been good enough in the past. Initiatives to improve phonics teaching are beginning to pay dividends. The progress that pupils are making is better than in other subjects. In the best examples, teachers routinely check pupils’ understanding of unfamiliar words and make sure that pupils can apply their phonics skills to spell new words and implant them into full sentences. This is giving pupils a firmer foundation on which to improve their early reading skills. In a Year 1 class, pupils accurately applied the digraph ‘ch’ to identify words such as ‘chalet’, ‘chorus’ and ‘children’, even though the sound is different in each case. However, this skill has not extended into pupils’ writing, as there is too much focus on single words. In some lessons, adults do not pick up on pupils’ mistakes.
• Teaching assistants help pupils to access the curriculum by providing encouragement and support. This helps pupils understand what is expected of them. Some teaching assistants are growing the skills they need to ask pertinent questions and help pupils deepen their understanding in order to make rapid progress. The quality and effectiveness of support remains variable.
• All teachers share learning objectives so that pupils know what is expected of them. Joint planning by teachers who teach in the same year group has led to greater equality in learning. These are two of the non-negotiables introduced by senior leaders to improve consistency across the school.
• Pupils respond quickly to requests made by class teachers. Pupils are punctual to lessons and are promptly ready to listen and to learn when lessons start. Resources are distributed swiftly so that little learning time is lost.
• Relationships between adults and pupils, and between pupils, are warm and friendly. Pupils feel comfortable to answer questions and try new learning as a result.
• The curriculum, based on topics and themes, enables pupils to learn about a wide range of subjects. Teachers expect pupils to build on their reading, writing and mathematical skills when they are learning in science and geography, for example. However, it is too soon to see the impact of this cross-curricular approach on improving standards.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Requires improvement

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is good. Pupils are looked after well and with great care and sensitivity. Procedures to meet the emotional needs of pupils who are vulnerable, distressed or have specific difficulties are particularly well managed and organised. As a result, most pupils feel safe and secure.
• Specialist staff have a significant impact because they are knowledgeable about pupils’ needs and know them and their families very well. They have secured strong links with other agencies to support families when they need it the most. In this way, they make a positive difference to pupils’ lives outside of school, which in turn, has an impact on pupils’ ability to learn and make progress. A parent expressed her gratitude to the school by writing, ‘Thanks to everything the school has provided, he (her child) is able to deal with his emotions and has improved his overall well-being.’
• Pupils have many opportunities to express their opinions. They feel that an adult will help them if they need it. There are many ways that pupils are able to access support, such as through the school’s counselling team or through sharing their thoughts in worry boxes that are dispersed around the school. Pupils say that this helps them to feel better when they have a problem. Leaders use surveys to collect pupils’ views to sharpen this aspect of the school’s work.
• Pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is prioritised by the school. For example, pupils’ work in topic books shows extensive opportunities to learn about different beliefs.
• Pupils chatted readily to inspectors about the many ways they are supported to keep themselves safe, such as where to line up when a fire drill sounds and how to cross a road with care. They understand the importance of keeping themselves healthy. Pupils understand how to protect themselves when they are using the internet.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils requires improvement. This is because pupils lose focus and concentration in lessons when activities are not challenging or interesting enough and fail to motivate them.
• Additionally, attendance remains a key issue for leaders to improve. Attendance remains too low despite the wealth of strategies put in place by leaders to encourage pupils to attend school every day. Leaders have rightly communicated to parents the negative impact that poor attendance has on their children’s learning. However, some parents are not valuing the importance of the education that the school provides. As a result, strategies implemented by leaders are not improving attendance quickly, although there are ‘green shoots’ of improvement. For instance, the number of pupils who achieve 100% attendance certificates is rising.
• Overall, pupils’ behaviour has improved. Incidents of poor behaviour have reduced, and as a result, pupils are more able to contribute positively in lessons. Pupils appreciate being able to earn stickers for good learning and behaviour and wear them proudly on their sweatshirts.
• Leaders are working hard to reduce the number of fixed-term exclusions given to pupils for serious infringements of school rules. Pupils who were once excluded from the classroom environment are being welcomed back, which is having a positive impact on their ability to learn and make progress.
• Pupils who find it difficult to manage their own behaviour are given effective support to help them overcome the significant barriers that they face. Pupils say that behaviour has improved. They understand that they sometimes make mistakes, but most pupils feel that this does not stop them from learning.
• Pupils are supervised effectively at breaktimes. Peer mediators help to resolve any minor disputes that may arise. Consequently, there are few incidents of poor behaviour or accidents. Pupils play together happily at breaktime and enthusiastically state how much they enjoy spending time with their friends.
• During the inspection, pupils were polite and considerate of each other. They commonly held doors open for inspectors and picked up clothes that had fallen off pegs.

Outcomes for pupils Inadequate

• There was a significant decline in standards at the end of the last academic year. Attainment of pupils across the school was well below the national average, including in phonics. The proportion of pupils who attained the expected standard by the end of key stage 2 was very poor. The difference between the achievement of disadvantaged pupils and other pupils nationally widened. Pupils were not prepared well for the future.
• Continuing low standards mean that outcomes are inadequate. Pupils are let down by weak outcomes because they do not have secure foundations in English and in mathematics on which to build future learning.
• Leaders are now addressing poor teaching and underachievement with urgency. Current pupils, including disadvantaged pupils, are making better progress than in the past. However, the progress that pupils are making is insufficient to make up for their considerable underachievement in the past. It is too early to see the impact of leaders’ work on raising standards throughout the school.
• The most able pupils in particular are underachieving. Too few reach the highest standards, including the small number of most-able disadvantaged pupils in the school. This is because expectations of what pupils can achieve are not high enough.
• Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities make less progress than their classmates do in reading, writing and mathematics. They are not making enough progress from their varying starting points.
• Standards in the early years and key stage 1 are showing emerging signs of improvement. Achievement in Year 2 is rising quickly. Effective teaching and successful additional support is helping those pupils who missed learning in the past to catch up quickly.
• Too many pupils are not able to apply their phonics knowledge to spell accurately. Pupils’ spelling is particularly weak in key stage 2 because of weak teaching in the past. In addition, basic punctuation skills, such as the use of capital letters and full stops, are not entrenched in pupils’ writing, resulting in writing that is below the standard expected for their age. However, the progress that pupils are currently making in phonics in the early years and key stage 1 is encouraging. Pupils are grasping the early stages of reading more effectively than in the past.

Early years provision Requires improvement

• The early years provision requires improvement because children are not prepared well enough for transition into Year 1. Too few children reach a good level of development by the end of Reception Year.
• Children’s learning journeys are detailed and cover all areas of learning. However, they show that children commonly repeat what they have already learned. This is because assessment is not used well enough by adults to ensure that children build on what they already know and can do. Additionally, some adults do not have a secure understanding and knowledge of the early years curriculum. Therefore, although there are evident signs of improvement, children are not making the progress that they are capable of from their very low starting points in all areas of learning.
• Adults work hard to engage children in activities, and ask questions about what they know and are doing. Adults absorb children in role play to develop their creativity and imagination. However, adults do not use questioning skilfully to extend learning and deepen children’s understanding. Children’s interests are not built upon sufficiently well to capture their knowledge and understanding of the world and build learning around this.
• In the Nursery, adults do not consistently model effective language to children. They do not routinely rephrase or reframe what children say to extend their learning and help them to gain a deeper understanding of the world around them. Therefore, children’s language is not progressing as well as it could.
• Nevertheless, leaders have invested in professional development for staff in the early years to help them improve children’s language skills. This is supporting disadvantaged children in particular to learn to communicate effectively. Children in the Reception class chatted readily with inspectors about the cuddly toy owl babies they were holding and the bats in caves they were making.
• Early years is resourced well to support children’s reading, writing and mathematical development. Because of this, children are making greater progress in learning about numbers and shapes, and space and measure, than in the past.
• All areas of learning are catered for, both indoors and in the outdoor environment. The outdoor learning environment linked to Reception is vibrant and stimulating and provides a range of exciting activities that promote children’s learning. Children zoomed around on trikes dressed in police outfits, made exciting creations in the mud kitchen, and exchanged money for goods in the grocery store. The Nursery outdoor environment requires improvement, because it does not afford children the same level of stimulation.
• Children are often given opportunities to engage in activities independently from adults. They are able to maintain their interest for extended periods. This includes times when they are mark-making and practising their early writing skills. Children in Reception practised spelling words using magnetic letters, without being asked to, and accurately sounded out digraphs such as ‘ou’ and ‘ai’ to inspectors. Some children were able to precisely form letters to spell words such as ‘swirling’ and ‘snowstorm’. Displays provide children with vocabulary that they can copy and include in their emerging writing.
• Children manage their behaviour well. Adults demonstrate strong pastoral care for children, deal sensitively with their personal needs and ensure that children are safe at all times. Children share resources and tidy up quickly. They follow routines confidently and care about each other and the resources that they use.
• Parents are involved and engaged in their children’s learning, and a sense of shared responsibility for learning is tangible. During this inspection, a host of parents enjoyed working and playing alongside their children during a stay-and-play session.
• In a short time, the new early years leader has evaluated what needs to be done to strengthen the early years provision. She has a clear vision for the future, including making certain that children move from Nursery to Reception with abilities that are broadly typical for children of their age.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 140493 East Sussex 10019858 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 sponsor-led 3 to 11 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 443 Appropriate authority Hastings Academy Trust Chair Executive principal Telephone number Website Email address Peter Savage John Smith 01424 425670 www.thebairdprimaryacademy.org.uk principal@thebairdprimaryacademy.org.uk Date of previous inspection Not previously inspected

Information about this school

• This is a much larger than average-sized primary school.
• The proportion of pupils who attract pupil premium funding is well above the national average.
• The proportion of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities is above the national average.
• The proportion of pupils who join or leave the school other than at the beginning or end of the school year is higher than the national average.
• The school became part of the Hastings Academy Trust in January 2014. The trust is sponsored by the University of Brighton.
• There have been significant changes in the leadership and management of the school since the school became an academy. The executive principal was new to role in April 2016. He appointed a principal of Baird Primary Academy in September 2016.
• The executive principal is responsible for two schools. Both Baird Primary Academy and the other school are part of the Hastings Academy Trust. Each school has a board of local governors.
• The school meets the government’s current floor standards for 2015, which set the minimum expectations for pupils’ attainment and progress.
• The school meets requirements on the publication of specified information on its website.
• The school complies with DfE guidance on what academies should publish.

Information about this inspection

• Inspectors observed learning in classes on 40 occasions. The majority of visits to lessons were carried out jointly with senior leaders.
• Discussions were held with senior leaders, middle leaders and members of staff. Inspectors also met with representatives of the local governing body and academy trust.
• Inspectors examined a wide range of documentation, including that relating to school improvement, school self-evaluation, safeguarding, behaviour and attendance, reports on the quality of teaching, and assessment records.
• Inspectors spoke to pupils informally during the school day and observed them on the playground, at breakfast club and in lessons. They also met formally with a group of pupils to gather their views about the school.
• Inspectors heard pupils read.
• Inspectors looked at pupils’ work in books, including their writing, mathematics, topic work and children’s early-learning journals.
• Inspectors observed a class assembly.
• Inspectors spoke to parents at the end the school day. In addition, inspectors took account of 28 responses to Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View, and an additional 17 comments made by parents online.
• Inspectors also took account of 40 survey responses submitted by staff.
• Inspectors reviewed the checks made on staff about their suitability to work with children.
• Inspectors examined the quality of the information provided by the school and the school’s website.

Inspection team

Abigail Birch, lead inspector Sue Reid Susan Aspland Cassie Buchanan Her Majesty’s Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector