Kingsham Primary School Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Improve the quality of teaching so that it is consistently good across the school, by ensuring that:
  • learning activities which have been precisely planned enable all groups of pupils to make rapid progress from their different starting points
  • teachers check pupils’ progress frequently and regularly, so that they can move pupils’ learning on quickly.
• Ensure that leaders’ actions to improve attendance result in all groups of pupils coming to school regularly.
• Improve opportunities for pupils across the school to develop positive learning behaviours, so that they are consistently ready to learn.
• Improve pupils’ outcomes across key stage 2, so that they make consistently good progress and achieve in line with national expectations by the end of Year 6.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Good

• The headteacher joined the school in September 2016. Supported well by her senior team, she leads the staff effectively in their determination to make this school better than the predecessor school.
• Leaders evaluate the school’s strengths and weaknesses accurately. This enables them to prioritise the actions they need to take to improve the school. As a result, standards are rising, particularly in the early years and in key stage 1.
• The University of Chichester Academy Trust supports the school well in its work. Staff from the trust work closely with colleagues in school to improve the quality of teaching and develop leadership across the school. This is contributing successfully to raising standards.
• Staff are committed to improving the school. They apply what they learn during useful training to their work in the classroom. Leaders, including governors, hold staff increasingly to account for the difference their work makes to pupils’ achievements.
• Leaders use additional sports funding creatively to raise the profile of sport within the school and increase pupils’ participation. They engage increasing numbers of pupils in physical activity, through a wide range of activities and the chance to compete against pupils from other schools. Leaders ensure that the improvements to the school’s sports provision are sustainable by investing in useful staff training linked to a range of sports.
• Provision for pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities is strengthening as a result of effective leadership. The special educational needs coordinator (SENCo) uses her skills and experience adeptly to evaluate how effectively pupils’ needs are met and to develop provision further. She checks what impact this has on their academic progress as well as their wider development. Where pupils are not catching up quickly enough, the SENCo works with staff to help them to refine teaching to meet individual needs. This is helping pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities to make good progress.
• Leaders have thought carefully about the needs of the pupils in their school, and adapted the curriculum accordingly. As a result, pupils experience a suitably broad curriculum and have useful opportunities to apply their literacy and numeracy skills across a wide range of subject areas. For example, learning in history, geography and science is linked to specific writing outcomes.
• Leaders’ work to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, through their use of the pupil premium, is increasingly effective. Leaders understand the barriers that impede the learning of these pupils, and take appropriate steps to address them. The increasingly rapid progress disadvantaged pupils make is helping them to catch up with, or, in some cases, achieve better than their peers in school.
• Pupils experience a range of opportunities within and beyond the taught curriculum that prepare them well for life in modern Britain. Learning about values such as democracy, tolerance and the rule of law is incorporated into curriculum topics. Younger pupils have a less secure age-appropriate understanding of these topics than older pupils. Leaders are refining the wider curriculum so that it helps to establish a consistently positive culture of acceptance and learning behaviour across the whole school.
• While leaders’ actions are resulting in ongoing improvements to the school, they have not currently secured consistently good behaviour, teaching and outcomes for pupils. Aspects of good practice which are more routinely evident across early years and key stage 1 are less well embedded across key stage 2. This variation in the quality of provision was reflected in parents’ feedback during the inspection.

Governance of the school

• The interim governing body incorporates a suitable range of skills and experience. Governors play an active part in the life of the school, which helps them to know the school well. They understand the school’s relative strengths and the priorities for ongoing improvement.
• Governors work closely with the trust to hold the school’s leaders appropriately to account. They ask increasingly challenging questions to check their understanding of what leaders tell them. They use their regular visits to test out leaders’ assertions about how the school is improving.
• The interim governing body evaluates its own work regularly. Consequently, it understands where its practice could be strengthened further, such as in relation to checking the school complies with what it should publish on its website. Governors utilise opportunities within and beyond the trust to develop their understanding, for example, in relation to published pupils’ performance information. Their own development plan supports and contributes to the wider school improvement agenda.
• Governors recognise that some improvements to the school have not impacted rapidly enough on pupils’ outcomes. They note that there have been occasions in the past where they have not challenged leaders soon enough about the rate of improvement in pupils’ outcomes by the end of key stage 2.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.
• Pupils feel safe at the school. They value the way adults care for them and provide helpful support when they need it. Pupils whose circumstances make them vulnerable are looked after well.
• Leaders, including governors and the trust, make sure effective policies and procedures are in place to safeguard pupils. Alongside staff, they undertake regular training which ensures that they understand their responsibilities. Leaders adapt their approach in order to meet emerging needs; for example, in relation to safety and the use of social media. Leaders carry out careful checks on adults working in the school and keep appropriately detailed records.
• Where adults have concerns about a pupil, they report them appropriately and take suitable action to provide suitable support. They work with experts beyond the school, where appropriate, so that pupils and families get the help they need. Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities are particularly well supported in this respect, and are increasingly involved in plans to help and care for them.

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 whole school. As a result, pupils do not make sufficiently rapid progress or achieve as well as they should by the end of key stage 2.
• Where learning is less effective, teaching does not challenge pupils to make good progress from their different starting points. For some pupils, the work is too easy, so they do not make rapid progress. For others, the work is too difficult, so they cannot access it readily and their progress is slower.
• Teachers do not always check carefully how pupils are getting on with their learning in lessons. Consequently, they do not identify quickly enough when pupils are ready to move on. This means that time in lessons is not always used as productively as it could be to move learning forward.
• In key stage 2, pupils’ learning behaviours are not sufficiently developed for them to persevere when they get stuck. They are overly reliant on the adults that help them in the classroom. This is particularly the case for pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities. Without prompt support from an adult, pupils switch off from their learning or start to misbehave when they get stuck.
• Teachers use a consistent approach to showing pupils how to improve their work. However, feedback is not always precise enough to enable pupils to understand clearly how to improve, and so its impact is reduced.
• Across key stage 1, teaching is typically more effective than in key stage 2. This reflects the journey of improvement that the school is on. In key stage 1, pupils engage with their learning, are increasingly independent and make good progress.
• Where teaching is more effective, expectations for learning and behaviour are high. Pupils demonstrate the skills of working together to solve problems and using their prior learning in a different context. They are resilient and resourceful, using tools and skills to help themselves, and others, when work challenges them beyond their comfort zone.
• Phonics skills are taught effectively. Pupils in key stage 1 enjoy reading and use their phonics skills well to decode ‘tricky’ words. All of the pupils moving into Year 3 in September 2017 have secured an appropriately high standard of phonics skills to prepare them effectively for their next stage of learning.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Requires improvement

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare requires improvement.
• Pupils do not routinely demonstrate well-established and positive attitudes towards their learning across the upper years of the school. This affects how well prepared they are for the next stage of their education.
• Pupils understand the concept of bullying and what to do if it happens to them. They say that adults use assembly time to promote anti-bullying messages, which are also displayed around the school. Where bullying concerns are reported adults take action, but pupils feel it can take longer to resolve a problem than they would like.
• Pupils learn about how to keep themselves healthy and safe in a range of different ways. For example, pupils in Year 1 link their learning about how to eat healthily to the gardening club which gives them the opportunity to grow fruit and vegetables. Older pupils are taught sensitively about sex and relationships in an age-appropriate way. Pupils’ understanding of how to keep themselves safe on the internet is not as secure as it could be.
• Pupils feel safe in school. They are confident that they could talk to a trusted adult about any worries they may have. They appreciate being able to visit the welfare room if they hurt themselves.
• The nurture programme provides well for pupils who need extra social and emotional support. This is contributing positively to individual pupils’ attendance, happiness and preparedness for learning.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils requires improvement.
• Pupils’ conduct in lessons and around the school is variable. Some pupils say that their learning is affected by other pupils’ poor behaviour in lessons. Pupils also report that some pupils can be boisterous or badly behaved at playtime and lunchtime. A notable proportion of parents also report concerns about poor behaviour and how effectively it is dealt with by the school’s staff, although this was not reflected in what inspectors observed during the inspection.
• Pupils report that adults take action to address poor behaviour when it occurs. However, this does not lead to as rapid an improvement in behaviour as pupils would like. Sanctions do not seem to have the impact they need to in key stage 2, where pupils’ positive learning behaviours are less well established.
• Pupils do not attend school as regularly as they should. Attendance figures, while improving slowly, remain below the national average. Leaders recognise that improving attendance remains a priority for the school.
• Leaders’ actions have been successful in reducing the proportion of pupils who are persistently absent from school. A shift in culture, that has raised expectations across the school, has supported this improvement. The percentage of persistent absentees is still above the national average, but is reducing rapidly.
• During the inspection, pupils were welcoming to inspectors and generally courteous towards each other. They say that teachers encourage them to be friendly and considerate. They understand the school’s values, which promote independence, respect and equality.

Outcomes for pupils

• Pupils’ outcomes by the end of key stage 2 are not good enough. While pupils in Year 6 have made more progress than previous cohorts, they are not attaining as well in reading, writing and mathematics as they should.
• Pupils do not achieve as well in writing across the school as they do in reading and mathematics. This variation is greatest in Year 3, where standards in writing are much lower than for reading and mathematics.
• Boys and girls do not perform equally well across their core subjects. With the exception of pupils in Year 4, girls routinely outperform boys in reading, writing and mathematics, as is the case nationally. The difference in achievement between girls and boys that is evident at the end of the early years foundation stage does not appear to diminish consistently as pupils move through the school.
• Pupils’ progress from different starting points is variable. Pupils with low or middle prior attainment do not make sufficiently rapid progress over time. This means that they do not catch up with their most-able peers in school as quickly as they need to in order to be prepared well for the next stage of their education.
• Disadvantaged pupils are making increasingly rapid progress. As a result, they now achieve close to, and in some cases better than, their peers in school. However, they continue to achieve at a standard that is below other pupils nationally.
• Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities make progress in line with other pupils. In Years 1, 3 and 4 they are making better-than-expected progress in mathematics. However, their progress has not accelerated sufficiently in reading and writing to enable them to begin to catch up and achieve at the levels expected for their age.
• Pupils’ rates of progress are clearly accelerating across the school. In-year performance information is reflected in pupils’ work, which shows good progress over the course of this academic year. This is beginning to raise pupils’ attainment in reading, writing and mathematics.
• Pupils’ achievements in the Year 1 phonics screening check have improved notably over time as a result of effective teaching in this area. Although the percentage of pupils reaching the Year 1 phonics standard has dipped slightly in 2017, all pupils have achieved the required standard by the end of Year 2, which has not been the case in the past.
• Leaders, supported well by the trust, have worked closely with teachers to ensure that assessments are more accurate than in the past. Teachers work with colleagues from across the trust to validate their judgements. This helps teachers to identify where pupils are underachieving, so that extra support can be supplied to help those pupils to catch up.

Early years provision Good

• The quality of provision in the early years foundation stage is good.
• Children achieve well by the end of the early years foundation stage. The proportion of children achieving a good level of development is broadly in line with the national average, and has improved notably since the school opened in 2014. For some children, this represents better-than-expected progress from below-average starting points.
• Children are happy, safe and confident. They interact well with each other and with adults, playing purposefully together and demonstrating high levels of independence. Consequently, they make good use of their well-resourced and stimulating learning environment, which contributes to their strong progress over time.
• Children respond well to teachers’ high expectations. Children’s opportunities to work alongside Year 1 pupils prepare them successfully for future learning, equipping them with the skills and resourcefulness to tackle tricky problems.
• The early years leader is effective in her role. She works closely with other members of the early years team to ensure a consistency of approach between the two classes. Consequently, children are able to benefit from a consistently positive learning experience, moving seamlessly between the formal indoor and informal outdoor spaces.
• Staff make sure that children and families are supported well prior to starting in the Reception Year. Working alongside the special educational needs coordinator, the early years team ensure that any child’s specific learning needs are identified promptly, so that actions can be taken to meet them. Children, especially those who may be vulnerable, are supported well in making their transition into school life, and also as they move on to key stage 1 learning.
• Early years staff work effectively alongside parents to support children in their learning journey. Parents are kept well informed about, and involved in, learning activities through regular assemblies and the sharing of children’s work. Parents value these opportunities to support their children’s learning in school and at home.
• The curriculum evolves in response to children’s interests, and is suitably broad and balanced. Formal learning and free play link around a theme that stimulates children’s thinking and develops their wider skills. Adults engage readily with children, but do not consistently use these interactions to check children’s learning or move them on quickly.
• Girls achieve particularly well by the end of the early years foundation stage, compared with other girls nationally. Boys underachieve in comparison, and this sets a pattern that continues into key stage 1. On occasion, opportunities to accelerate boys’ progress, through targeting learning activities closely tailored to their needs, are missed.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 141181 West Sussex 10032512 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 5 to 11 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 217 Appropriate authority The University of Chichester Academy Trust Chair Headteacher Mrs Jane Evans Mrs Hilary Faulkner Telephone number 01243 784046 Website Email address www.kingsham.w-sussex.sch.uk office@kingsham.w-sussex.sch.uk Date of previous inspection Not previously inspected

Information about this school

• Kingsham is a broadly average-sized primary school. There are spaces for 45 pupils in each year group. In every year, except Year 2, pupils are taught in mixed-age classes.
• The school opened in September 2014, when the predecessor school became an academy. It is sponsored by the University of Chichester Academy Trust, alongside seven other primary schools and one secondary school.
• The headteacher joined the school in September 2016. One of the assistant headteachers joined the school in January 2017.
• The school has an above-average proportion of pupils who are supported by the pupil premium. The percentage of pupils who are from minority ethnic groups, or who speak English as an additional language, is below the national average.
• The percentage of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, including those who are supported by an education, health and care plan, is broadly typical.
• A larger-than-average percentage of pupils join or leave the school other than at the start of the Reception Year or the end of Year 6.
• In 2016, the school was above the floor standard of what the government expects pupils to achieve by the end of Year 6. This was not the case in 2015.
• The school meets requirements on the publication of specified information on its website.
• The school complies with Department for Education guidance on what academies should publish.

Information about this inspection

• Inspectors visited all of the classes to look at learning. They talked informally to pupils and looked at their work. Inspectors also considered pupils’ achievement by looking at a sample of work from Year 1 and Year 5. The work scrutiny and some of the lesson visits were carried out alongside school leaders.
• Inspectors looked at a wide range of information provided by school leaders. This included the school’s self-evaluation and action plan, records of visits from the trust, the contents of the school’s website, various policies, and records of pupils’ attendance, behaviour and academic performance. They also considered the effectiveness of safeguarding arrangements and reviewed the school’s central record of recruitment checks on staff.
• Inspectors met with the headteacher, senior and middle leaders, and groups of staff, pupils and governors. They spoke informally to parents in the playground at the start of the day and to pupils at playtime and lunchtime. The lead inspector also met with a group of representatives from the trust.
• Inspectors took into account 26 responses to the pupil survey and 17 responses to the staff survey. They also considered 54 responses to the online questionnaire, Parent View, including 53 free-text comments.

Inspection team

Kathryn Moles, lead inspector Neil Small

Her Majesty’s Inspector Ofsted Inspector