Broadstone Middle School Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Improve the leadership and quality of teaching by ensuring that:
  • governors use the findings from their monitoring activities to check the effectiveness of teachers in meeting the individual needs of pupils
  • pupils who require additional support receive planned interventions that enable them to make good progress
  • teachers accurately assess pupils’ skills, knowledge and understanding before moving them on to new work
  • teaching challenges the most able pupils to deepen their thinking and learning
  • pupils take pride in the presentation of their work.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Good

• Leaders have successfully implemented the changes required to improve the school. Effective recruitment of new staff has brought vitality and new ideas to the classroom. This has resulted in improvements in pupils’ progress, learning and behaviour. Teachers comment that lessons now provide a calmer environment for pupils to learn.
• Support from the Castleman Trust, and other external professionals, has established a new confidence within the senior leadership team. Improvements to the quality of teaching and pupils’ outcomes illustrate leaders’ capacity for further improvement.
• Leaders use the additional funding for pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities well in key stage 3. However, they have not targeted resources sufficiently well enough to ensure that pupils in key stage 2 make sustained progress over time.
• The curriculum provides topics that pupils enjoy across a range of subjects. Parents recognise how this has enhanced the interest and motivation of their children to learn across a range of subjects.
• The curriculum supports pupils’ well-being and personal development well. Leaders promote the school’s caring and inclusive culture and ethos through initiatives that raise awareness and understanding of others less fortunate than themselves.
• Leaders check the quality of teaching to ensure that pupils learn effectively. However, leaders’ monitoring focuses on the teachers’ work rather than the impact of their teaching on how well pupils learn. For example, the impact on learning for the most able pupils is not monitored effectively.
• Leaders focus sharply on developing middle leaders’ skills. This has been instrumental in securing and embedding the many changes during this year.
• Leaders use pupil premium funding, sport premium and Year 7 catch-up funding effectively. This has improved outcomes in English and mathematics.

Governance of the school

• The governing board has undergone significant change, which has been reflected in its renewed strategic vision and role across the trust. Governors challenge and asked pertinent questions of leaders about the progress pupils make. However, until recently, governors have not checked the quality of teaching and its impact on ensuring that pupils make good progress.
• Governors have sound knowledge and understanding of how additional money such as the pupil premium and Year 7 catch-up funding is spent, and how this affects pupils’ progress and outcomes. However, the monitoring of vulnerable learners, especially those who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, is not as effective.
• Governors have ensured that effective performance management procedures are in place to improve the quality of teaching.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective. All checks to ensure that staff are safe to work with children meet requirements and are recorded accurately on the single central register. All staff have undergone training in safeguarding, and senior leaders have completed additional training to lead on safeguarding incidents, and work with other agencies to keep children safe. Staff know and understand the school’s safeguarding procedures and ensure that concerns are reported promptly to the appropriate person. New staff undergo safeguarding training as part of their induction. As a result, the school’s safeguarding culture is strong.
• Leaders monitor and track concerns thoroughly, such as absence. Leaders work constructively and proactively with parents and agencies to maintain pupils’ safety in school and beyond the school gates. Almost all parents state on Ofsted’s online survey, Parent View, that their child feels safe and happy in school.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Requires improvement

• Some teachers do not pick up pupils’ misconceptions quickly enough. Consequently, some pupils do not make the progress they are capable of.
• The learning of some pupils falters when they are moved on too quickly before securing their understanding of key themes. For example, when writing teachers do not secure pupils’ understanding sufficiently before introducing new learning.
• Teachers do not challenge sufficiently the most able pupils consistently. Therefore the gains from their starting points in their knowledge and understanding and skills are not as rapid as they could be.
• Teachers’ expectations are not high enough across a range of subjects. For example, work seen in pupils’ books illustrates wide variations in spelling and presentation. As a result, some pupils do not make enough progress.
• Pupils are eager to learn in lessons. Most teachers question pupils effectively. However, the school’s approach is not implemented consistently to support pupils to deepen their thinking and understanding.
• Leaders have encouraged pupils to become more involved in checking their own learning and progress in their books. However, there is variability in the support provided to enable them to make rapid progress and build on their knowledge and skills.
• The teaching of mathematics, and pupils’ learning in this subject, has improved, which has had a positive impact on pupils’ outcomes. Most pupils are challenged appropriately according to their ability, and the scope of teaching provides opportunities for deeper learning. Nonetheless, this approach is yet to become consistently embedded across the school.
• Homework contributes to pupils’ learning and development. The activities planned supplement the taught courses well. This supports pupils effectively to consolidate their skills, knowledge and understanding.
• School reports to parents are purposeful and demonstrate what pupils have covered and mastered across subjects. Leaders have responded to parental requests and the new format of reports now shows the achievement of pupils over the year. As a result, parents feel their views are listened to and acted upon.
• Leaders’ work to improve teachers’ planning has ensured that there is increasingly purposeful learning across the school. Teachers collaborate effectively together, which makes learning more consistent.
• The teaching of reading is effective across the school, and especially in Year 6. Some pupils challenge their own thinking by interpreting the texts they read and making their own judgements on how to improve their reading skills.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Good

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is good.
• Leaders have provided opportunities for pupils to work together and support each other through a range of activities that build resilience and social skills. This has enhanced pupils’ curiosity to deepen their learning in the classroom.
• Pupils are confident and consistently positive about the changes the school has undergone. They demonstrate good attitudes to learning and can confidently make the right decisions. Pupils value their education and enjoy coming to school to learn. The impartial careers advice enables pupils to articulate their ambitions for the future.
• The school has a strong culture of safeguarding and pupils feel safe. They understand the potential issues that can arise. For example, pupils know how to keep themselves safe when using the internet. They trust adults in the school and know who to talk to if they have a concern.
• Pupils prepare well for the next steps in their education and are keen to move on at the end of Year 8. Pupils expressed that they feel, ‘a bit nervous and excited, both at the same time’ at their move to the next stage of their education.
• Pupils in Years 7 and 8 clearly understand the different types of bullying, and can talk about showing tolerance for other groups of people from other backgrounds. This is less evident in younger pupils.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils is good.
• Pupils are polite and behave well during lessons. They understand the school’s expectations for good behaviour and how this influences their learning in the classroom. Their respect and care for each other is evident around the school.
• Pupils and parents spoke positively about the recent changes that the school has undergone. They enjoy the innovative way the school has approached and developed the spiritual, moral, social and cultural aspects of the curriculum. Pupils express that they could now ‘try out skills and do really good things’, and other pupils felt that it ‘helps you keep trying; you just don’t give up’.
• Overall attendance has improved over the year, and is above the national average. The school takes appropriate steps to follow up non-attendance promptly and, as a result, persistent absence has fallen sharply. Attendance for disadvantaged pupils and other groups of vulnerable learners is, now, above the national average.

Outcomes for pupils Requires improvement

• Effective action by leaders is improving outcomes for pupils from their starting points. At the time the school became an academy, in September 2014, pupils’ progress was weak and their attainment low. However, the recent improvements in pupils’ behaviour, the use of assessment information and a greater focus on pupils’ outcomes confirms that the school is improving quickly.
• The curriculum does not meet the needs of some pupils and is not sufficiently adapted to provide appropriate challenge for the most able and least able pupils.
• Pupils’ progress is not securely good in all subjects. Although leaders have ensured that pupils are making stronger progress this year, teachers do not provide sufficient challenge for the most able pupils to make good progress in key stage 3.
• Leaders have secured improvements in reading, writing and mathematics as pupils move through the school from key stage 2. However, this has not yet enabled pupils to make consistently good progress across the school.
• Disadvantaged pupils are making similar progress to their non-disadvantaged peers. However, the most able disadvantaged pupils are not making the progress they are capable of.
• Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities are making better progress in key stage 3 than in key stage 2. However, leaders are not ensuring that the deployment of resources and adaptations to teaching are securing the best possible progress for this group of learners.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 141184 Poole 10033111 This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005. Type of school Middle deemed secondary School category Academy sponsor-led Age range of pupils Gender of pupils 9 to 13 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 493 Appropriate authority The academy trust Chair Headteacher Anne Hanby Dawn Wilks Telephone number 01202 696121 Website Email address www.bmsweb.co.uk schooloffice@broadstonemiddle.poole.sch.uk Date of previous inspection Not previously inspected

Information about this school

• The school became part of an academy sponsor-led trust with Broadstone First School in September 2014. The headteacher was appointed in April 2016. The executive headteacher is a national leader of education.
• The school meets the government’s floor standards, which set out the minimum requirements for pupils’ attainment and progress in 2016.
• Most pupils are from White British backgrounds. A very small proportion of pupils are from minority ethnic backgrounds.
• The proportion of disadvantaged pupils eligible for pupil premium funding is below the national average.
• The proportion of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities is below the national average.
• 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 observed learning and looked at pupils’ written work.
• Pupils from key stages 2 and 3 were spoken to about their school life, and, individually, about learning over the two days.
• A range of documentation was scrutinised, including records of monitoring, minutes of meetings of the governing board, safeguarding records, behaviour logs, and the plan for school development.
• Meetings were held with the headteacher, executive headteacher, chair of the trust and governing board, and a group of governors. Meetings were held with staff responsible for safeguarding arrangements.
• Further meetings were held with the middle leaders in the school, and with individual staff with oversight of specific areas of the school’s work.
• There were 66 responses to Parent View and one telephone call from a parent. Inspectors met with individual parents and a parent group to consider their views.

Inspection team

Diana Denman, lead inspector Her Majesty’s Inspector Kathy Maddocks Her Majesty’s Inspector Chris Hummerstone Ofsted Inspector