Cranbourne Ofsted Report

Full report

In accordance with section 13(4) of the Education Act 2005, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector is of the opinion that the school no longer requires special measures.

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Improve the quality of teaching to become consistently good by ensuring that:
  • teachers plan learning that meets pupils’ needs precisely
  • the pace of learning in lessons is appropriately rapid
  • pupils use feedback routinely to accelerate their progress.
• Reduce the variations in achievement across subjects and year groups so that all groups of pupils, particularly boys and those with low prior attainment or who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, make good progress
• Improve behaviour further so that:
  • pupils’ positive attitudes mean that they are consistently ready to learn
  • established routines for managing behaviour effectively are adopted by staff joining the school in September and beyond.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Good

• Since arriving in October 2016, the headteacher has provided clear leadership to move the school forward. She has galvanised the staff, who are committed to improving the school. The senior team supports the staff effectively to raise expectations and improve standards.
• Leaders ensure that pupils have access to a suitably broad and balanced curriculum. The range of academic subjects prepares pupils effectively for their future work or learning. The formal curriculum is enriched by a comprehensive range of clubs and activities. These give all pupils the opportunity to develop their wider skills and build their cultural and social experiences.
• Pupils benefit from a cohesive approach to their wider learning via the strengthened personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education programme they experience. Consequently, their spiritual, moral, social and cultural understanding develops well over time.
• The deputy headteacher and her evolving teaching and learning team coordinate the sharing of good practice and useful coaching work with individual teachers. This work is developing the effectiveness of teaching across the school, with leaders recognising useful next steps that will continue to improve the quality of teaching in the future. Staff value the opportunities to learn from each other.
• The local authority provides useful challenge and support to the school. It works closely to support middle and senior leaders in ensuring that monitoring is rigorous and leads to ongoing improvement. Local authority officers have confidence in school leaders’ capacity to continue to make the school more effective.
• Leaders use clear lines of accountability to make sure that all staff are focused on improving pupils’ outcomes. Staff are expected to concentrate their work on the difference it makes to pupils’ achievements. Governors check that leaders’ reviews of individual staff performance are consistently rigorous.
• Leaders have taken effective action to address the areas for improvement identified at the last inspection. Their work to address safeguarding concerns has resulted in a significant positive shift in culture across the school. This is reflected in the encouraging feedback from parents about the quality of provision and improvements to the school.
• Staff, including those who are new to the school or to the teaching profession, feel well supported. They agree with pupils who recognise that the school is improving, especially since expectations for pupils’ behaviour have been raised.
• Leaders’ actions to improve pupils’ outcomes by strengthening the quality of teaching are in the earlier stages of development. They are showing some signs of making a difference, but leaders’ efforts have been impeded by staff recruitment challenges. As yet, their actions have not led to consistently good teaching and outcomes for pupils.
• Leaders have reviewed and adapted how additional funds are used to support disadvantaged pupils. Leaders have a clear and appropriate strategy for helping these pupils to catch up with their peers nationally. Disadvantaged pupils are making increasingly rapid progress and are catching up with their peers in school. Leaders recognise that disadvantaged pupils’ achievements are not consistently as good as those of other pupils nationally across their range of subjects.
• The provision for pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities is improving over time. Leaders use additional funding well to provide specific extra help to pupils who arrive at the school needing to catch up in English and mathematics. As a result, pupils develop their literacy and numeracy skills quickly, which supports their work in the wider curriculum. Leaders recognise that there is further work to do to improve outcomes by the end of Year 11 for pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities. They have plans in place to address this through better monitoring and development of the quality of teaching.

Governance of the school

• Governors have a suitable breadth of expertise which supports them in their role. They are committed to improving the school. They know the school well and work openly with school leaders to develop a shared understanding of the school’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Governors ask increasingly challenging questions to a widening range of school leaders. This helps them to hold leaders to account for the difference their work is making to the effectiveness of the school. They have focused rightly on ensuring that leaders made prompt and effective improvements to safeguarding provision in the school.
• Since the last inspection, there have been many changes to the personnel that make up the governing body. As such, governors are developing in their collective role, while managing the challenges associated with the school’s current move towards amalgamation carefully.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective. Leaders have taken clear and decisive action to improve the culture of safeguarding across the school. Consequently, pupils feel safe and well cared for.
• Staff receive suitable training that makes sure that they understand their safeguarding responsibilities. They ensure that any concerns about pupils are reported and recorded carefully. Leaders monitor pupils’ welfare closely and act appropriately to secure extra help from beyond the school for pupils and their families who may need it.
• Pupils describe a clear understanding of safeguarding, which is promoted through the safeguarding curriculum. They trust adults to support them with any worries they may have.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Requires improvement

• The quality of teaching, learning and assessment requires improvement because it is not consistently good across the school.
• Teachers’ expectations of what pupils can achieve are not always high enough. Consequently, work is not routinely pitched at a level that challenges pupils appropriately to make rapid progress. Where pupils’ work is incomplete and carelessly presented, this is sometimes accepted instead of being addressed.
• Staff have useful information about pupils’ individual needs and prior achievement. However, they do not use it precisely enough to target future learning on what pupils already know and can do. As a result, pupils, and particularly those who most need to catch up with their peers, do not make sufficiently rapid progress from their different starting points.
• Pupils do not always arrive at lessons ready to learn. Some do not behave as well as they should, which affects their learning and that of others in their class. This is more often the case for older pupils and in lessons where staffing turbulence affects the quality of teaching over time. Pupils are sometimes overly reliant on their teachers to motivate their learning, rather than managing their own behaviour.
• Teachers give pupils regular feedback about how to improve their work. Where this is an integral part of the learning process, pupils apply what teachers tell them and their work improves as a result. However, in some areas, feedback is not precisely linked to pupils’ next steps or used routinely as part of pupils’ learning, and so its impact is reduced.
• Leaders have established non-negotiables which are helping to secure a conducive learning environment in most lessons, especially in the lower school. Pupils understand these expectations, which are promoting a growing learning culture across the school.
• Teachers understand their subjects well, even when teaching beyond their main subject specialism. They use their knowledge effectively to plan work which builds learning over time for their classes.
• Pupils’ use of derogatory language has been virtually eradicated. If it happens, teachers act swiftly to address it. The effective PSHE education programme supports pupils successfully to understand and apply the values of tolerance and respect.
• Some of the teaching in the school is of high quality. Where learning is most effective, teachers use their high expectations of what pupils can achieve to plan appropriately challenging future learning. Pupils use the helpful feedback they receive to improve their work. This leads to pupils making good progress over time.

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 learn how to keep themselves safe through the coherent PSHE and safeguarding curriculum. They gain a secure understanding of age-appropriate issues which are pertinent to them and their local context. Their wider learning provides them with rich opportunities to explore fundamental British values, such as democracy. This prepares them well for the future.
• Pupils are now highly tolerant of each other. A determined and collective approach by school staff and pupils has eliminated previous instances of homophobic and racist name-calling. Staff and pupils utilise rich opportunities to celebrate diversity and to promote acceptance of cultural differences.
• Staff maintain a clear focus on keeping pupils safe. They understand the issues that are most pertinent to the pupils in their care, such as anxiety and mental health. Consequently, pupils are supported well and able to access appropriate help sensitively and readily. This contributes to an increasingly calm and supportive atmosphere around the school.
• A very small number of pupils access alternative provision to support them with specific medical or behavioural needs. School leaders work closely with alternative providers to ensure that arrangements meet individual needs closely. This supports these pupils in accessing education appropriately.
• Pupils have a clear understanding of bullying, including cyber bullying. They report that incidents of bullying are relatively rare and are dealt with effectively by staff. They learn about how to use the internet responsibly, which helps to keep them safe online.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils requires improvement. This is because, while behaviour is improving, it is not currently good across all areas of the school. Some older pupils do not behave as well as they should, which affects the quality of learning in their lessons, as well as causing concern to younger pupils as they move around the school site.
• Leaders have rightly placed a strong emphasis on raising expectations of pupils’ behaviour. Most pupils understand and respond appropriately to the clear systems in place to manage any poor behaviour, because they have been involved in developing them. Staff use rewards and sanctions more consistently and promptly than in the past. Consequently, the number of instances of poor behaviour is reducing over time.
• Pupils attend school regularly. Absence figures are below national averages and continue to improve. Governors work with school leaders to make sure that actions taken to improve attendance are effective for all. The proportion of pupils who are persistently absent from school is now close to the national average. Leaders work successfully with experts from beyond the school to support individual pupils who do not come to school as regularly as they should.
• Pupils understand the importance of punctuality as a basis for effective learning. Leaders’ high expectations and proactive approach mean that almost all pupils come to school on time. This helps pupils to arrive at their lessons ready to learn.
• Pupils in alternative provision attend regularly. Their attendance is monitored carefully by leaders at school to ensure that they are safe and accessing education.

Outcomes for pupils Requires improvement

• Following the previous inspection, outcomes at the end of Year 11 declined further in 2016. Pupils made limited progress across a broad range of subjects. Their attainment was well below the national average, despite their arriving at the school with prior achievement which was broadly in line with national figures.
• Pupils’ attainment by the end of Year 11 continues to be variable across subjects. Outcomes by the end of Year 11 are set to be much improved this year, especially in English and mathematics. Attainment in some other subjects, including science, geography and religious education, is not improving quickly enough.
• Boys do not typically achieve as well as girls. Leaders identify this as a recurring pattern and direct extra help accordingly. They are currently unclear about the reasons behind this underperformance and therefore how to prevent this pattern from continuing.
• Pupils with different prior attainment do not make similar progress in English and mathematics across key stage 4. The most able make better progress in mathematics than they do in English, whereas the reverse is true for the least able. Pupils with low prior attainment make particularly limited progress in mathematics across key stage 4.
• Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities receive effective extra help that improves their literacy and numeracy skills quickly. Although there are indications that their attainment is improving in some year groups and subjects, it is not consistently the case. Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities do not currently make sufficiently rapid progress over time to enable them to catch up and achieve as well as other pupils nationally by the end of Year 11.
• Disadvantaged pupils achieve increasingly well as a result of leaders’ effective work to support their progress. They are catching up with their peers in school. Leaders have used expertise from beyond the school to review how effectively additional funding supports disadvantaged pupils. Appropriate plans are in place to accelerate their progress further through a focus on quality first teaching, so that disadvantaged pupils achieve as well as other pupils nationally.
• Pupils in year groups other than Year 11 are achieving increasingly good outcomes over time, from end of key stage 2 starting points which are broadly similar. This suggests that their progress is accelerating over time.
• Teachers and leaders have adapted assessment systems effectively. They have a clear and accurate understanding of how well pupils are achieving, supported by validation with colleagues from beyond the school. This enables them to identify quickly those pupils who are not making as much progress as they should and to put extra help in place to support them. This is helping to improve standards further.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 116432 Hampshire 10037224 This inspection was carried out under section 8 of the Education Act 2005. The inspection was also deemed a section 5 inspection under the same Act. Type of school Secondary School category Age range of pupils Gender of pupils Maintained 11 to 16 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 686 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Headteacher Telephone number Website Email address Mr John Crawford Mrs Jane Aplin 01256 868605 www.cranbourne.hants.sch.uk/ gen.enquiries@cranbourne.hants.sch.uk Date of previous inspection 2–3 December 2015

Information about this school

• Cranbourne Business and Enterprise College is an average-sized, mixed, maintained secondary school. It is in a federation with Fort Hill Community School. The two schools are currently making preparations to amalgamate on the Cranbourne school site from September 2017.
• The proportion of pupils supported by the pupil premium is broadly in line with the national average. The percentage of pupils who are from an ethnic minority group or who speak English as an additional language is lower than is seen nationally.
• The school has a higher percentage of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities than other schools nationally. However, the proportion who have an education, health and care plan is below the national average.
• Since January 2017, approximately 60 pupils have joined the school.
• The headteacher who was in post at the previous inspection is no longer at the school. The current headteacher joined the school in October 2016. A number of governors, including the chair of governors, have also left since the previous inspection.
• A small number of pupils receive alternative provision at the Andover Education Centre or the Ashwood Academy.
• The school did not meet the government floor standards for what pupils are expected to achieve by the end of Year 11 in 2016.
• The school meets requirements on the publication of specified information on its website.

Information about this inspection

• Inspectors met with the headteacher, senior and middle leaders, and groups of staff and governors. The lead inspector also met with a representative from the local authority and considered results from a staff survey provided by school leaders.
• Inspectors visited 25 lessons across Years 7 to 10 and across a range of subjects. Some of these visits were carried out alongside school leaders. Inspectors also visited a Year 7 assembly. They reviewed a sample of work from pupils in Years 7 and 10 and looked at pupils’ work in the lessons they visited.
• Inspectors met with groups of pupils from Years 7 and 10. They also talked to pupils informally during visits to lessons and at breaktime and lunchtime.
• Inspectors reviewed a wide range of information provided by the school, including leaders’ school self-evaluation and improvement planning. They considered safeguarding arrangements and documents, reports from governors and local authority representatives, and performance information relating to pupils’ attendance, behaviour and achievement.
• An inspector spoke to representatives from the Ashwood Academy and the Andover Education Centre.

Inspection team

Kathryn Moles, lead inspector Her Majesty’s Inspector Nicholas Simmonds Ofsted Inspector