Eynsham Community Primary School Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Improve leadership and management at all levels by:
  • senior leaders and governors strengthening the rigour with which they hold leaders to account for the quality of teaching and pupils’ behaviour
  • developing a clearer, more rigorous approach to evaluating the quality of teaching, placing a greater emphasis on the impact of teaching on pupils’ outcomes, especially for disadvantaged pupils
  • subject and middle leaders assiduously following up with teachers on any actions that arise from their monitoring
  • developing a more coherent approach to tracking pupils’ progress, so that leaders, including governors, can be more incisive about any further improvements that need to be made.
• Improve the way pupils behave, both in class and around the school, by:
  • establishing higher expectations for how well pupils behave that are adhered to throughout the school
  • ensuring that procedures for managing pupils’ behaviour are consistently applied
  • making sure that sanctions are more appropriately matched to the misbehaviour
  • strengthening record-keeping so that agreed actions taken in response to poor behaviour and bullying can be followed through and checked.
• Improve teaching so that pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils, most-able pupils, and pupils that need to catch up, make the strongest progress possible by:
  • ensuring that the high expectations that some teachers have of how hard pupils should work, how neat their presentation should be and how well they should behave are adopted by all teachers
  • teachers setting work that enables pupils with academic potential, especially disadvantaged pupils, to apply their knowledge, skills and understanding at a deep level
  • ensuring that teachers have a more accurate understanding of what is needed to achieve age-related expectations
  • making sure misconceptions are rapidly identified and dispelled, especially in mathematics
  • placing more emphasis on ensuring that pupils’ spelling is accurate and pupils can use vocabulary and grammatical structures that are appropriate to the purpose of the writing fully implementing plans to develop pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding in humanities, a modern foreign language and science.
• A review of the way pupil premium funding is spent is recommended to support governors and leaders in this aspect of their roles.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Requires improvement

• Due to leaders’ efforts over the last few years, the school has improved but it is not yet good. Leaders have overseen some necessary changes effectively, including to the school’s environment, to essential systems and to safeguarding, which are all now better. However, more recent improvements to teaching, the curriculum and pupils’ outcomes are not fully embedded.
• Leaders do not always apply the same criteria when evaluating how effective teaching is. This has led to some unhelpful confusion in written reports about the quality of teaching, including overestimating how effective it is. Leaders’ verbal evaluations, shared with inspectors during joint observations, are more accurate.
• Directors of the academy trust have wisely recently stepped up their support for leaders, following some weaker results in 2016 national tests. They have sensibly focused on training leaders, including new senior leaders, to hold others to account in a more robust manner. However, this work is in its early days and has not yet had an impact.
• Some subject and year group leaders do not have high enough expectations of how well pupils should behave, how hard they should work and how neat their presentation should be. As a result, they do not follow up their checks with enough guidance for teachers about what aspects of their practice need improving. This weakens leaders’ capacity to hold teachers to account when rates of improvement are too slow.
• Leaders have not ensured that all teachers are accurate when assessing whether pupils are on track to meet age-related expectations in mathematics and English. Pupils’ learning in humanities and science is assessed using a less formal approach than in mathematics and English. As a consequence, some pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding in these subjects are not as developed as they could be.
• Work in disadvantaged pupils’ books suggests additional funding does not enable disadvantaged pupils to make the rapid progress they need to catch up. Leaders’ analysis of the impact of funding provided for extra academic help is not insightful enough. It does not clearly identify the specific gains pupils make as a result of the funding.
• The leadership of behaviour is not always effective. Leaders do not insist that all teachers follow whole-school approaches when managing disruptive behaviour. Leaders are not always stringent enough when deciding upon sanctions for the small number of pupils who repeatedly misbehave.
• Funding to assist pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities is mostly spent appropriately. It is used to provide teaching assistants and additional, specific therapies, for instance to assist pupils’ speech and language development. Although the provision for pupils is carefully mapped, not enough focus is placed on evaluating the impact of the funding using the full range of information that the school has available, such as behaviour logs.
• The school has sensibly developed the way it tracks pupils’ progress. However, there is now an extensive amount of information on pupils’ progress and attainment gathered using too many different measures and formats. As a result, some information is contradictory, which clouds the picture, making it harder for leaders to identify key priorities. In addition, some leaders do not use the information they have to ascertain what aspects of their own and others’ work need to develop further.
• Leaders have developed the school curriculum by successfully broadening the range of subjects on offer so that pupils can access creative subjects. Leaders have more recently added humanities subjects and a modern foreign language to the curriculum. Pupils’ learning in these newly established subjects, and also in science, is not always deep enough. There are strong plans in place to develop assessment and practice in newly established subjects and science.
• Aspects of spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) learning are delivered effectively. Social and cultural skills are developed well through residential experiences, away-days, and input by creative artists. However, some aspects of SMSC are less well developed because leaders do not check the provision to establish if all aspects are being equally promoted. Although fundamental British values are given prominence around the school, values such as respect for the rule of law do not have enough influence on the way some pupils conduct themselves.
• Generally speaking, additional sports funding is used effectively to develop clubs and employ expert teachers, such as specialist dance teachers, as well as to purchase equipment. Spending plans are too generalised and do not identify in sufficient detail how funding will drive forward pupils’ sporting prowess in the sports most relevant to this school, such as swimming.
• The school has developed effectively the way it works with the local community, including parents, to nurture and encourage pupils. Strong links with the local secondary school in the same trust support pupils in settling in to their new school well. For example, teachers from the local secondary school deliver specialist sports training and Year 6 pupils make visits to the secondary school to meet the pupils and staff.

Governance of the school

• Governance has improved over the last few years, following substantial changes to the governing body. There is strong evidence that governors are now holding the school to account more stringently, but their improved rigour is more apparent in some areas than others. For example, governors have challenged leaders to improve outcomes in national tests. However, governors have not placed enough focus on holding leaders to account for pupils’ behaviour. In addition, their oversight of targets set for managing teachers’ performance has been too ‘light-touch’. Some teachers’ targets are not specific enough and it is unclear what is required for the targets to be met. Governors sensibly ensure that additional pupil premium funding is spent on a variety of academic and pastoral support, according to the pupils’ individual needs. However, governors have not focused enough on ascertaining the impact of the funding on most-able disadvantaged pupils nor on gauging the impact of additional pastoral support. Making good use of their professional expertise, governors have requested that the school employs better methods to identify pupils, especially disadvantaged pupils, with academic potential. This work is a step in the right direction but is not yet having an impact on teaching.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective. The headteacher leads this aspect of the school’s work successfully. He employs a great deal of rigour and tenacity when following up on concerns. Records are highly effective because consideration and care have been put into ensuring that staff are clear about their responsibilities to include specific details. The headteacher keeps a very clear oversight of pupils about whom concerns are expressed, analysing patterns over time to ensure that pupils do not slip through the net. Effective record-keeping has strengthened the quality of evidence that the school provides in its referrals to the local authority, supporting welfare officers in responding to referrals appropriately.
• The school collaborates effectively with national safeguarding charities. As a result, pupils and parents access detailed and accessible guidance about staying safe online and how best to report e-safety concerns.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Requires improvement

• Teaching varies too much between classes, subjects and year groups. Broadly speaking, teaching is less consistently effective in Years 1, 3 and 5, although there are some pockets of better practice within these year groups. Across the school, even in classes where aspects of teaching are stronger, teachers do not always insist that pupils produce the very best work they can.
• Teachers do not always ensure that the tasks they set enable pupils who are behind to make the rapid progress needed to meet age-related expectations. Some tasks that teachers set skim the surface and do not require pupils to think deeply or apply their learning. For example, pupils wrote phrases to describe a character but did not develop the phrases into sentences and paragraphs.
• Pupils’ learning in history, geography and modern foreign languages is not as effective as it is in some creative subjects. Worksheets sometimes limit opportunities for pupils, especially the most able, to extend specific subject skills, for instance weighing up a range of historical evidence. Work in science books indicates that the extent of pupils’ scientific knowledge, skills and understanding is variable.
• Work in some pupils’ books shows that the tasks that teachers define as more challenging require additional work at the same level, rather than at a deeper level. As a consequence, pupils with the potential to exceed age-related expectations do not always do so. For example, pupils do not get enough opportunities to apply their mathematical reasoning skills.
• Generally, pupils’ spelling is not accurate and pupils do not always apply their phonics knowledge well. Some pupils are not clear about how to structure their writing and use vocabulary and grammar for a specific purpose. For instance, pupils writing a persuasive letter did not use persuasive vocabulary, nor did they link their points to build their argument.
• In a number of classes, teachers do not iron out pupils’ misconceptions well enough. For example, in mathematics some pupils intersected the axes of a bar-chart graph at five rather than zero. This misconception meant that they misinterpreted the information presented in the graph.
• Teaching in a number of individual classes across the school and in both Year 6 classes is more effective, and pupils’ behaviour is better. Where teaching is stronger, pupils try hard and achieve success in the stimulating tasks they are set. For example, pupils worked well in a Year 6 class, finding genuine inspiration in their stretching work on Malala Yousafzai.
• Phonics teaching is effective, following changes made to the way it is taught. The proportion of pupils in line to reach the expected standard in the phonics screening check is set to rise this year.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Requires improvement

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare requires improvement. Some pupils disrupt the learning of others because they are not focused enough on their own learning. Pupils generally do not take pride in their work, and their presentation is occasionally scruffy.
• Some teachers do not make their expectations clear enough about how pupils should respond to the challenges they set them. As a consequence, pupils do not routinely push themselves and some adopt negative attitudes to learning. For example, some pupils discussed their personal lives at length when they should have been sharing their work in history.
• Attendance overall has improved since the last academic year. However, the proportion of pupils who have been persistently absent since September 2016 remains the same as in the last academic year. This plateau is due for the most part to circumstances outside the school’s control. However, responsible leaders do not analyse data on persistent absence in enough detail. For example, they are not sufficiently aware of what proportion of the group of pupils who are persistently absent are also disadvantaged.
• Where teaching is stronger, pupils display positive attitudes to learning. For example, in one Year 5 class, pupils were sharing their ideas enthusiastically and listening respectfully to each other’s views about their writing.
• Some parents commented favourably on the programmes and spaces available to nurture pupils who have specific social and communication needs. They highly value this aspect of the school’s work.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils requires improvement. Pupils’ behaviour varies because teachers are not always consistent in applying agreed behaviour management approaches. One pupil commented that ‘behaviour changes in different classes’. In some classes, a number of pupils’ disruptive behaviour is unchecked.
• Lunchtime behaviour has improved due, in part, to better training for midday supervisors on techniques to deal with confrontational situations. However, there is strong evidence that a small hard core of pupils continue to display anti-social behaviour, including using offensive language. The sanctions applied to encourage these pupils to behave better are not always appropriate, given the nature of their misbehaviour.
• Most parents and pupils spoke positively about how nurturing and supportive the school is. However, a small number from both groups were concerned about how bullying is managed. Records kept by responsible leaders do not include enough detail about how bullying incidents are resolved and do not indicate any required follow-up actions.
• On the days of the inspection, inspectors observed pupils behaving sensibly around the school at break- and lunchtime.

Outcomes for pupils Require improvement

• Broadly speaking, pupils’ outcomes are improving but they are not yet good because improvements are not consistent across year groups, subjects and groups of pupils.
• Disadvantaged pupils’ progress is beginning to improve, following wide differences with other pupils nationally in 2015 and in 2016. However, teaching is not always effective enough at enabling disadvantaged pupils to make the strong progress required to meet age-related expectations from their low starting points.
• The work set is not challenging enough to enable disadvantaged pupils with academic potential to make the rapid progress needed to exceed age-related expectations. The proportion of disadvantaged pupils exceeding age-related expectations is too low.
• Improved outcomes in mathematics are not consistent across all year groups. Pupils’ work in books shows that they do not always get the opportunity to apply their mathematical knowledge at a deep level.
• Generally speaking, pupils achieve better in reading than in writing. Work in pupils’ books shows that pupils’ spelling is not accurate enough. Teachers do not always take enough account of weaknesses in spelling, punctuation and grammar when assessing whether pupils have reached age-related expectations.
• Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities broadly make progress in line with other pupils, with some making stronger progress. The school’s own information shows targeted pupils’ progress in writing is not as strong as in mathematics and reading.
• Most-able pupils attain well, with a higher proportion than average exceeding age-related expectations in national key stage 1 and key stage 2 tests in 2016. However, the school’s own information, published information and pupils’ work in books show that pupils do not make the rapid progress of which they are capable.
• Pupils are not well enough prepared for secondary school because they do not have a good enough grounding in academic subjects other than English and mathematics, such as history, geography and, to a lesser extent, science. Pupils are better prepared for their next stage of learning in creative subjects.
• There is good evidence that phonics is improving and the proportion of pupils reaching the expected standard in the 2017 phonics screening check is due to rise considerably from 2016, when it was well below average. The school’s records show that pupils who did not reach the expected standard for the phonics screening check in 2016 did make strong progress from their starting points.

Early years provision Good

• The early years setting has improved more consistently than other areas of the school and is good. Effective leadership means that staff successfully develop their practice through collaboration and reflection. Assessment procedures are accurate and children develop new skills in a nurturing, exciting and safe environment.
• Children are well supported in the setting by assistants and teachers. They are encouraged to think while they play because of their teachers’ and assistants’ probing questioning. For example, an assistant helped children learn effectively when they were playing with clay by asking them to explain what makes the clay easy to roll out. Children’s responses showed a good grasp of vocabulary relating to shape and texture, as well as the ability to connect and explain their ideas.
• The proportion of children reaching a good level of development has steadily improved and was above the national average in 2016. It is set to rise further this year. The school has ensured that teachers and assistants make accurate assessments of children’s progress. Teachers successfully use these assessments to plan bespoke opportunities for children to enhance their learning in those areas in which they are less confident. As a consequence, children have the skills required to cope with key stage 1 learning.
• Generally speaking, effective additional support enables disadvantaged children to make strong progress from their starting points. Many disadvantaged children join the setting at a level of development below what might be expected of children at their age.
• Children benefit from the extensive and well-resourced outdoor learning area, including a wooded section, where children learn about the natural world through carefully planned activities.
• There are well-considered procedures to ensure that children are kept safe while they play outdoors, which are currently being strengthened further. Leaders are aware that some of the outdoor area is out of adults’ line of sight from a number of positions and sensibly take this into account as staff are deployed outside.
• Children follow instructions from adults and behave sensibly. When children play outside at lunchtime, they are looked after well by lunchtime supervisors. On occasion, supervisors do not seize the opportunities with which they are presented to extend children’s learning through effective questioning. Some may require additional training in order to do this.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 140827 Oxfordshire 10032507 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 408 Appropriate authority Academy trust Chair Headteacher Telephone number Website Email address Dr Kirstie McKenzie-McHarg Mr Ian Moore 01865 881 294 www.eynsham.oxon.sch.uk head.2209@eynsham.oxon.sch.uk Date of previous inspection Not previously inspected

Information about this school

• The school meets the requirements on the publication of specified information on its website.
• The school complies with Department for Education guidance on what academies should publish.
• In May 2014, the school converted to become an academy, sponsored by the Eynsham Partnership Academy Trust, which is a multi-academy trust. Bartholomew School is the main school in the trust and the only secondary school. There are five other primary schools in the trust. The current headteacher was in post when the school joined the multi-academy trust.
• The school is a larger than average-sized primary. The majority of pupils are White British and the proportion of disadvantaged pupils eligible for additional pupil premium funding is below the national average, with fewer than one in five pupils being in receipt of the funding.
• The proportion of pupils identified as requiring additional support because they have special educational needs and/or disabilities is well below average. The proportion of pupils who have an education, health and care plan is well below average.
• The school meets the government’s 2016 floor standards, which are the minimum expectations for progress and attainment.
• No pupils attend provision off-site.
• The school has a heated outdoor swimming pool, which is maintained by a specialist company.

Information about this inspection

• Inspectors made visits to observe learning in all year groups, including in the early years. They also attended an assembly. A total of 22 part-lessons were observed and inspectors made short visits to lessons on two separate occasions.
• Samples of pupils’ work were scrutinised by inspectors on four different occasions. During two of which, leaders undertook the book scrutiny alongside inspectors.
• Inspectors met with a group of pupils, and also heard a separate group of pupils read aloud. Two pupils from the school council gave a guided tour of the school to an inspector. Inspectors observed pupils during break- and lunchtimes.
• Meetings were held with the headteacher and deputy headteacher on several occasions. Separate meetings were held with a group of senior leaders, and with a group of middle leaders, which included the English and the mathematics subject leaders, as well as phase leaders.
• Inspectors held a separate meeting with a group of staff, including teaching assistants and newly qualified teachers. Inspectors also met with the physical education coordinator, the leader responsible for behaviour, who is also the special educational needs coordinator, and with two lunchtime supervisors.
• Inspectors held meetings with the chair of the local governing body and two other governors. In a separate meeting, inspectors met with two of the directors from the Eynsham Partnership Academy, both of whom work closely with the school.
• Inspectors reviewed 92 responses made by parents to the online parent survey, Parent View. They also reviewed 52 comments made by parents using the free-text facility within the online parent survey and 25 responses to the staff questionnaire. Inspectors spoke with parents informally at the end of the school day, on two occasions.
• Documentation and policies, which included the school’s own evaluation and development plans, were reviewed. Inspectors scrutinised the school’s safeguarding records, including safety checks made when teachers are appointed, and teachers’ files.

Inspection team

Sarah Hubbard, lead inspector Sue Cox Jo Garlick Her Majesty’s Inspector Her Majesty’s Inspector Ofsted Inspector