The Hendreds Church of England School Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Strengthen communication with parents by:
  • helping all parents better understand important decisions about the way the school is run
  • ensuring that the website contains all the information parents need in accordance with guidance about what academies should publish.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Outstanding

• The headteacher is both passionate and highly knowledgeable about teaching and learning. These qualities inform her leadership. Consequently, her expectations of staff and pupils are unfaltering, ensuring that everyone strives to achieve the very best. There is no room for despondency or negativity. The school welcomes new pupils regularly and expects everyone to succeed.
• The deputy headteacher and senior teacher provide invaluable support to the headteacher. Together they sustain a culture of continuous improvement by working closely with individual teachers, as required, to make sure that learning matches pupils’ different needs closely. As a result, teachers receive high-quality and timely support to improve their work, which enables pupils of all abilities to make excellent progress.
• The headteacher places the personal development of each pupil firmly at the heart of the school’s work, leading by example. Across the day, senior leaders are on hand to take the lead in promoting pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. For example, senior leaders and teachers chatted calmly with pupils at lunchtime, praising them for taking turns, trying new foods and supporting each other.
• Pupils are extremely well prepared for life in modern Britain. Incidental conversations, along with a wide range of learning experiences, provide opportunities to extend pupils’ understanding of British values and equal opportunities. Pupils demonstrate respect for others, including their beliefs and their rights to choose. One pupil said, ‘We are all people, but we are all different and that is good.’
• Senior leaders ensure that the pupil premium funding is spent wisely. They have identified precisely the barriers to learning that disadvantaged pupils face, using their detailed knowledge of individuals. Disadvantaged pupils, including the most able, benefit from additional teaching and personal development whenever they need it to make rapid progress across the curriculum.
• The curriculum enables pupils to make substantial progress across a wide range of subjects, including Latin. The headteacher ensures that there are sustained opportunities for pupils to learn essential English and mathematics skills so that pupils are very well prepared for their secondary schooling. At the same time, pupils acquire further knowledge through topics such as ‘World War One’ and special events and experiences. For example, older pupils relish chances to work alongside their parents to design, build and race a car in the ‘Goblin car project’ that takes place at Goodwood each year.
• All pupils, including children in the Reception class, can attend the breakfast and after-school club every day. These clubs complement the curriculum well, providing further learning, through the use of tablet computers, art activities and physical games led by sports coaches. Senior leaders and teachers lead this provision and exploit opportunities to build pupils’ confidence and develop social skills such as good manners.
• The sport premium is used extremely well to further pupils’ physical education. Pupils value the gymnastics, games and judo lessons taught by specialist teachers. They recognise that this can support their personal development too. One pupil said, ‘It teaches us a lot, like self-control.’
• Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities make strong progress from their varied starting points. Most meet the standards for their age because expectations of what they can achieve are very high. The headteacher ensures that teachers know each pupil’s individual needs and supports staff to deliver the right amount of help to these pupils.
• The deputy headteacher has made astute changes to the mathematics curriculum. He has correctly identified that some pupils in key stage 2, particularly girls, lack confidence and need more time to secure essential knowledge and skills. Careful assessment and extra teaching have ensured that achievement in mathematics for current pupils matches that in other subjects.
• The Oxford Diocesan Schools’ Trust provides valuable support to the school. An audit of provision for the most able pupils ensured that senior leaders have the right emphasis on securing success for this group. Emerging middle leaders and aspiring senior leaders benefit from training that further strengthens the leadership of the school.
• Parents are extremely positive about the school, recognising that their children receive excellent support and personal care. Nevertheless, a very small minority of parents feel that communication could be further improved, particularly so that they understand the reason for some decisions.

Governance of the school

• Governors have extensive knowledge of the school and use this to very good effect. They have implemented training that they have received from the trust to further extend their challenge to senior leaders. The headteacher provides detailed reports and information about pupils’ progress that enables governors to hold leaders to account and secure excellent outcomes for pupils.
• The governing body has the necessary skills to ensure that essential requirements are met. Governors keep a close eye on aspects of the school’s work such as finances and health and safety to assure themselves that all is as it should be. Governors have recently identified the need to improve the information on the school’s website so that it complies with the guidance from the Department for Education.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.
• The headteacher ensures that there is a culture of safeguarding that takes into account current issues and risks posed to pupils. Staff receive regular training updates and pupils have numerous opportunities to learn about safety in the curriculum. This includes opportunities to debate issues such as attitudes towards different genders so that pupils can start to recognise potentially harmful views.
• Leaders take the right actions to keep pupils safe. They work closely with other agencies where necessary to challenge and support families to assure themselves that pupils are safe and attend school well. As a result, pupils are kept as safe as possible and rates of attendance have increased.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Outstanding

• Teachers have very high expectations of what pupils can achieve. This spans the breadth of the curriculum. Consequently, pupils of all abilities make sustained progress across the range of subjects. For example, pupils’ science books show that they are developing important knowledge and extending their vocabularies so that they can explain processes such as digestion. Pupils used terms such as ‘bolus’ and ‘peristalsis’ to describe how food is broken down.
• The most able pupils make substantial progress because activities are matched closely to their abilities. Teachers use their knowledge of these pupils’ strengths to design suitably challenging tasks. For example, in a Year 6 mathematics lesson, the teacher asked the most able pupils to consider the probability of selecting a particular card from a pack, taking into account cards that had already been dealt. Pupils relished this challenge, articulating their ideas with precise vocabulary such as ‘possibilities’.
• Teachers have a secure knowledge of the subjects that they teach and they use this extremely well to support pupils’ learning. In a music lesson in the Years 1 and 2 class, the teacher taught pupils to sing ‘I like the flowers’ using perfect pitch and tempo.
• Reading is taught to children right from the moment they start school so that they acquire this essential skill as soon as possible. Children in the Reception Year have regular opportunities to practise their phonics in a range of activities and in play. One child demonstrated how he can already write his name and was attempting other sounds as he wrote his own letter for his mummy. Achievement in reading is strong across the school.
• In writing, pupils make sustained progress across the school because teachers help pupils to acquire a broad vocabulary and adopt a writer’s craft. For example, in a Years 3 and 4 lesson, pupils wrote about how ‘Fred’ became the finger puppet frog. One pupil wrote, ‘Suddenly he became a frog, a poor, helpless frog.’
• Teachers use assessment very well to accelerate pupils’ learning. This has been particularly effective in improving current pupils’ progress in mathematics so that it matches the high rates of progress in other subjects. Teachers routinely check pupils’ understanding of key concepts and provide extra activities in lessons and ‘early morning work’ that secure important knowledge.
• In this small school, staff get to know each pupil and build strong relationships with them, particularly those who have special educational needs and/or disabilities. Staff use these relationships to very good effect, motivating pupils to complete tasks and take important next steps that enable them to make similar progress to their classmates.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Outstanding

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is outstanding.
• Older pupils recognise that taking on responsibilities is a key characteristic of school life. They exercise their roles as lunchtime ‘watchdogs’ and buddies to younger children with great care and humility, providing highly effective support. Younger pupils appreciate the help that they receive from these friends who always sit at their table and help share drinks and cut up their food.
• No time is wasted to further pupils’ personal development. For example, teachers used a study of the book ‘The Secret Garden’ to teach older pupils about issues such as racism, gender roles and class differences. Consequently, discrimination is extremely rare.
• Pupils have a secure understanding of bullying, knowing that it is ‘doing something to hurt someone with words or actions more than once’. They also know that there are different types of bullying such as homophobic bullying. Pupils are confident that adults will help them if there is a problem, yet note that bullying is very rare because they work well together to solve any problems.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils is outstanding.
• Pupils have high levels of self-discipline. Even the youngest children quickly learn the expectations for their behaviour and know how to behave in a range of situations. Pupils of all ages show that they can chat calmly at breakfast, enjoy throwing balls around afterwards and then, later, walk into assembly with reverence.
• Incidents of poor behaviour are extremely rare. Pupils who sometimes have challenging behaviour receive support from staff and their classmates. The school community works together to help these pupils to develop self-control and make the right choices.
• Pupils’ attitudes to learning are exemplary. They recognise the importance of learning and value their teachers’ high expectations. Many pupils stated that they enjoy challenging tasks most of all.
• Pupils’ attendance is above the national average. Disadvantaged pupils’ attendance increased last year so that their attendance now matches that of other pupils. Families understand the importance of good attendance and punctuality because leaders have promoted this well.

Outcomes for pupils Outstanding

• Throughout the school, current pupils of all ages make substantial progress across the curriculum. In a range of subjects, most pupils reach at least the expectation for their age. This is because teachers have strong subject knowledge and identify carefully what pupils need to learn next.
• Reading is a particular strength of the school. The very large majority of pupils reach the expected standard in the Year 1 phonics check. At the end of key stage 1, pupils’ attainment in reading is well above the national average. This is replicated at the end of key stage 2, where progress and attainment in reading were high in 2016 compared to the national averages.
• The most able pupils achieve very well because teaching is suitably challenging for them. In 2016, the most able Year 6 pupils had the highest rates of progress in reading, writing and mathematics. The proportion of pupils exceeding the standards expected for their age was well above the national averages in reading and writing and close to the national average for mathematics. In key stage 1, a high proportion of pupils reached higher levels than the national average in reading, writing and mathematics.
• Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities make similar progress to their classmates. Many make sustained progress and reach the standards expected for their age as a result of highly effective additional support.
• Disadvantaged pupils make better progress than their classmates. Leaders expect these pupils to achieve very well and ensure that they receive appropriate personalised support. This includes the most able disadvantaged pupils, who go on to exceed the standards expected for their age.
• Current pupils are achieving as well in mathematics as they are in other subjects. This is because the deputy headteacher has made carefully considered changes to the curriculum to increase pupils’ progress.

Early years provision Outstanding

• The headteacher leads the early years and has maintained a clear focus on securing excellent teaching that supports children, including the most able, to take the right next steps in their learning. The headteacher works closely with all of the staff in the Reception and Year 1 class to further their skills and ensure that children can achieve well across the areas of learning. As a result, the proportion of children reaching a good level of development at the end of the Reception Year has risen to above the national average.
• Children join the Reception Year with a wide range of skills and abilities, though most are broadly typical for their age. During the year, most children make rapid progress across the areas of learning so that they are well prepared for Year 1. A minority exceed the expectations for their age because teachers identify these most able children and ensure that they are suitably challenged.
• Adults support children’s learning extremely well. They seize opportunities to interact with children and help them to take their next steps. For example, one child asked a teaching assistant to help him draw around his hand using a giant chalk. As she traced each finger, she prompted him to count with her.
• Parents are very positive about the way that staff support their children to settle in to the school. They appreciate the way that they can speak to staff each day and begin to form an important partnership with the school. One parent noted the rapid progress that her child had made in learning: ‘He went from writing nothing to words – already!’
• Children’s behaviour and personal development are excellent in the early years. This is because staff pay close attention to introducing the right routines and sharing their high expectations. Already children are showing that they know how to sit quietly and wait for their turn to choose their lunch, or agree how they will take equal turns at the exceedingly popular playdough table.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 140473 Oxfordshire 10019402 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 Primary School category Age range of pupils Gender of pupils Academy converter 4 to 11 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 143 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Headteacher Telephone number Website Email address Richard Case Elizabeth Tansley 01235 833 379 http://www.hendreds.oxon.sch.uk office.3250@hendreds.oxon.sch.uk Date of previous inspection Not previously inspected

Information about this school

• The Hendreds is smaller than the average primary school.
• The very large majority of pupils are White British and others come from a range of different ethnic backgrounds. Very few pupils speak English as an additional language.
• The proportion of disadvantaged pupils is below the national average. This group represents about a tenth of pupils in the school. In some classes there are very few or no disadvantaged pupils, making it difficult to describe pupils’ achievement in detail without identifying individuals.
• Few pupils have special educational needs and/or disabilities. Very few pupils have an education, health and care plan.
• Last year, some pupils joined the school in the Reception Year on a part-time basis.
• During the school year, a number of pupils with wide-ranging needs and abilities join the school from other schools.
• In November 2013, The Hendreds Primary School became a new school when it converted to an academy and joined the Oxford Diocesan Schools’ Trust. At the time of the last inspection in February 2011, the predecessor school was judged to be good.
• In 2015, the school met the government’s floor standards (minimum standards for pupils’ achievement at the end of key stage 2).
• The school does not meet requirements on the publication of specified information on its website.
• The school does not comply with DfE guidance on what academies should publish about the pupil premium, information about the reading and phonics schemes, and governance and finance.

Information about this inspection

• The inspector observed lessons in all classes, spoke to pupils and looked at work in their exercise books. The majority of observations were conducted jointly with senior leaders.
• Meetings were held with senior leaders, a group of pupils, two members of the governing body and a representative of the Oxford Diocesan Schools’ Trust.
• The inspector spoke to 11 parents and took into account 42 responses, including written comments, to the online questionnaire (Parent View). The inspector also considered three responses to the staff questionnaire.
• A range of documents were looked at, including the school’s information about pupils’ achievement and records concerning pupils’ attendance, behaviour and safety.

Inspection team

Caroline Dulon, lead inspector

Her Majesty’s Inspector