May Park Primary School Ofsted Report

Full report

In accordance with section 44(1) of the Education Act 2005, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector is of the opinion that this school requires special measures because it is failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education and the persons responsible for leading, managing or governing the school are not demonstrating the capacity to secure the necessary improvement in the school.

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Improve the quality of leadership by:
  • introducing a more rigorous approach to tackling the school’s weaknesses and ensuring that pupils make strong progress
  • ensuring that leaders use assessment information to hold teachers to account for the progress pupils make
  • ensuring that governors have the information they need to challenge leaders effectively about pupils’ progress
  • providing teachers with effective professional development and challenge to improve their practice
  • rigorously analysing incidents of challenging behaviour to reduce risk of future occurrences.
• Improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment by:
  • raising expectations of what pupils can achieve
  • ensuring that learning activities are well matched to the needs of pupils
  • ensuring that pupils are provided with interesting activities that challenge them to think deeply and prepares them well for the next stage in their education.
• Improve outcomes for pupils by:
  • urgently improving the progress that pupils make in reading, writing and mathematics so that more pupils achieve the expectations for their ages
  • ensuring that more pupils, including the most able pupils, achieve higher standards in all year groups
  • improving the quality of teaching, learning and assessment in the early years so that children make rapid progress and are well prepared for Year 1
  • ensuring that phonics is taught effectively
  • ensuring that pupils who speak English as an additional language and disadvantaged pupils have the resources and guidance they need to make good progress.
• Improve behaviour by:
  • raising expectations of behaviour in lessons and across the school
  • ensuring that there are robust systems in place to analyse and learn from behaviour incidents in order to reduce their frequency.
• Improve attendance so that it shows sustained improvement and compares more favourably with the national average.
• An external review of governance should be undertaken in order to assess how this aspect of leadership and management may be improved.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Inadequate

• Leaders do not successfully promote an ambitious and aspirational climate. Expectations are too low across the school and there is significant underachievement for pupils. Too little has been done to improve and secure successful outcomes for pupils in reading, writing and mathematics. As a result, too many pupils leave the school poorly prepared for their next steps.
• Leaders have identified areas for improvement, such as improving outcomes for pupils, reducing pupil absences and improving behaviour in lessons, but have not sufficiently tackled these areas. Leaders do not make full use of the information they have to secure improvements. For example, serious behaviour incidents are not logged in sufficient detail to ensure that patterns of incidents can be identified and lessons learned.
• Leaders do not make effective use of assessment information to hold teachers to account for the progress that pupils make. They do not provide robust feedback to staff that successfully supports their professional development. Therefore, staff are not clear about the improvements that they need to make to improve the quality of education provided for pupils.
• Additional funding to support disadvantaged pupils and those who have special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities is used to provide some additional staff. Despite this, these pupils do not make the progress they should.
• A number of staff do not feel confident that leaders in the school are tackling behaviour successfully or that they get the support they need to manage more challenging behaviour incidents.
• The physical education (PE) and sport premium funding is used effectively to provide wide range of sporting activities.
• Although the school aims to provide a wide range of subjects, including activities such as primary engineering and woodland walks, leaders have failed to ensure that the curriculum is planned so that outcomes for pupils improve.
• The school’s emphasis on values, such as developing tolerance for different cultures, contributes to pupils’ strong understanding of fundamental British values. Many parents speak highly of the care and support that the school provides, although some would like to see more challenge provided for their child.
• Newly qualified teachers (NQTs) should not be appointed by the school.

Governance of the school

• Governors have not ensured that they receive a robust range of information, presented clearly, that helps them to challenge leaders about the achievement of pupils.
• Nevertheless, governors are committed to the school. They provide a range of experiences and skills and are well equipped to support the school.
• The safeguarding lead checks recruitment procedures and helps them to be secure. However, they do not make best use of information about pupils’ attendance to more rigorously monitor pupils’ safety and well-being.
• The governors recognise that the school needs support and they are working closely with the local authority to ensure that this happens. They have also commissioned an external review of governance so that the governing body receives the support it needs.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective. Staff receive a wide range of training that covers all aspects of safeguarding. There are rigorous and well-organised systems in place for staff recruitment. Staff are inducted to the school with the information they need to keep pupils safe.
• Staff are clear about procedures for reporting concerns and receive safeguarding updates regularly. The designated lead for safeguarding ensures that concerns raised are responded to quickly and a range of external agencies are used to provide support and guidance as needed.
• The governor with responsibility for safeguarding visits the school frequently and makes appropriate checks to ensure that safeguarding arrangements meet statutory requirements.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Inadequate

• Teachers’ expectations are too low. There is a lack of urgency to ensure that pupils make the progress they should. Learning activities do not successfully build on what pupils already know, understand and can do. As a result, all groups of pupils make inadequate progress.
• Too often, teaching is weak and does not challenge pupils to think deeply so that they develop their understanding of new ideas. Activities do not consistently encourage pupils to become self-motivated learners. As a result, pupils become disinterested in their learning tasks and some pupils misbehave during lessons.
• In mathematics, teachers’ weak subject knowledge leads to pupils developing misconceptions about key mathematical concepts. There has been a drive to ensure that mathematical resources are available during lessons. However, pupils are not always clear about how to use these resources to support their learning and, as a result, confusion can arise.
• Leaders have focused on developing pupils’ understanding of number. However, pupils are not consistently expected to use this knowledge to work out mathematical problems for themselves. Therefore, they do not successfully deepen their understanding and make good progress.
• The teaching of writing does not systematically develop pupils’ writing skills. Although daily sessions to teach grammar, punctuation and spelling take place, pupils do not consistently use these skills to produce high-quality writing. Little time is spent editing and improving their writing, and therefore pupils do not deepen their understanding of what high-quality writing looks like.
• Teachers do not successfully check pupils’ understanding and adapt their plans to ensure that pupils receive the support or challenge they need to make good progress. Too often, the most able pupils continue with tasks that are too easy for them. As a result, they do not make the rapid progress they could.
• Pupils enjoy reading. However, teaching does not consistently ensure that pupils develop their knowledge of vocabulary and reading skills. There are too few opportunities to explore what texts mean and to equip pupils to understand more complex texts.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Inadequate

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare requires improvement. Pupils do not develop a sound understanding of how to be successful learners. Some pupils do not value their education and have negative attitudes towards their work.
• Too often, work is not planned appropriately to meet pupils’ needs and they do not receive high-quality guidance to ensure that they can improve their work. As a result, pupils do not consistently show pride in the work they complete and the presentation in their books is variable.
• Pupils understand how to recognise bullying and what to do to get help. They feel that incidents of bullying do occur but these are dealt with effectively by staff.
• Learning to promote pupils’ understanding of personal, social and health issues takes place throughout the school. Pupils understand how to be healthy and they take part in a wide range of sporting activities. They know how to keep safe, including keeping safe while on line.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils is inadequate. Although the number of exclusions has reduced, there are too many incidents of poor behaviour leading to disruptions to learning. There are significant low-level disruptions to learning during lessons.
• Absence is in the highest 10% of schools nationally, and has been this high for the past three years. The proportion of pupils who are persistently absent is also much higher than in most schools. Leaders recognise the need to improve attendance and have worked on a number of strategies aiming to encourage pupils to come to school more regularly. However, these have not had a positive impact on improving attendance across the school.
• The school provides additional learning spaces called ‘Atlantis’ and ‘Narnia’. These have been effective in supporting pupils who have social, communication or behavioural needs.

Outcomes for pupils Inadequate

• Outcomes across the school are too low. Pupils do not leave the school prepared well for their next stage of education. Despite a decline in pupils’ outcomes across the school over the past three years, leaders have not acted effectively to halt the decline and improve pupils’ achievement.
• In 2016 and 2017, pupils’ attainment in reading, writing and mathematics in Year 6 was in the lowest 20% compared to all schools nationally. Disadvantaged pupils do not catch up well and their attainment has also been in the lowest 20% for two years in reading and writing. Very few pupils achieve higher standards. In reading and mathematics, this includes pupils who achieved well at the end of key stage 1.
• In key stage 1, pupils’ attainment has also declined. In 2016, attainment in all areas was in the lowest 20% compared to other schools and, in 2017, attainment was in the lowest 10%. Very few pupils reach higher standards in reading, writing and mathematics. Too few pupils reached the expected standard in phonics in 2016 and 2017, which prompted leaders to review the systems and organisation for teaching phonics. However, too few pupils currently have the expected phonics skills for their age.
• Pupils’ progress across the school is also weak, particularly in reading and mathematics. In these subjects, progress for pupils by the end of key stage 2 in 2017 was in the lowest 10% compared to other schools.
• All groups of pupils make weak progress, including pupils who speak English as an additional language and pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities. Disadvantaged pupils make particularly weak progress in mathematics, and their progress has been significantly below the national average for the past two years.
• Current assessments provided by the school show that across all year groups, pupils are still achieving at lower standards than expected by this time of the year. Too few are working at age-related expectations in reading, writing and mathematics.
• Pupils’ books show that although there have been attempts to raise expectations and introduce more challenging work, this has not been successful. The quality of work in books is inconsistent. Pupils do not maintain pride in their work and they do not develop skills that ensure they are working at or above expected standards. Disadvantaged pupils achieve similar standards to their school peers but these standards are well below those expected for their ages.
• Pupils say that they would like work that is more challenging and that they do not feel well prepared for their next steps.

Early years provision Inadequate

• Due to the weak use of assessment and a lack of urgency to make improvements, teachers do not ensure that progress across a range of learning areas is rapid across the early years classes. The leader has an accurate view of the areas that need to be developed but, being new to the post, there has not been time to see the impact of any improvements made.
• Although outcomes have been steadily improving over the past three years, the proportions of children achieving a good level of development in key areas of learning are still below national averages. In 2017, only half of disadvantaged children achieved a good level of development. No children reached higher standards. Too few children enter Year 1 with the skills they need to be a successful learner.
• Children are secure and settled in the Nursery and Reception classes; they have plenty of activities to do, both inside and outside. However, staff time is not planned effectively to ensure that children develop the knowledge and skills they should.
• Activities are not consistently well matched to the learning needs of children. Children are rarely challenged to think for themselves and become independent young learners. As a result, behaviour sometimes deteriorates and learning time is lost.
• As is the case across the school, staff work well in partnership with parents. Parents appreciate the care provided that helps their children to enjoy school.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 109131 Bristol City of 10047882 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 Number of pupils on the school roll Maintained 3 to 11 Mixed 723 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Headteacher Telephone number Website Email address Margaret Simmons-Bird Paul Bull 0117 903 0075 www.maypark.bristol.sch.uk may.park.p@bristol-schools.uk Date of previous inspection 4–5 March 2015

Information about this school

• May Park Primary is a much larger than average-sized primary school and numbers have increased over the past few years.
• The school serves a diverse community. Just over half the pupils speak English as an additional language.
• The proportion of pupils who are disadvantaged and who have SEN and/or disabilities is higher than national averages.
• The proportion of pupils who join the school part way through their primary education is higher than average.
• Following a further deterioration in pupils’ outcomes in 2017, the local authority commissioned reviews to check the school’s effectiveness. The authority recognises that the school requires wide external support to ensure that it improves. However, this support has not yet started.
• The school meets the government’s current floor standards.

Information about this inspection

• Inspectors visited lessons across the school and looked at a range of pupils’ books alongside senior leaders. Several meetings were held with a range of leaders. There was also a meeting with newly qualified teachers. The views of 51 staff who responded to a survey were taken into account.
• Inspectors talked to groups of pupils and listened to parents’ views. Inspectors took into account the 88 responses to the online survey, Parent View and accompanying free-text comments.
• Inspectors looked at a range of documents provided by the school, including information about pupils’ progress, the school’s self-evaluation, review documents provided by the local authority, and documents about attendance and behaviour.
• Safeguarding procedures were checked, including those to do with recruitment.
• A meeting was held with governors. There was also a meeting with a representative from the local authority and an inspector spoke to another representative regarding safeguarding.

Inspection team

Tonwen Empson, lead inspector Malcolm Willis Martin Bragg Martin Greenwood

Her Majesty’s Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector