Harnham Infants' School Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Extend the skills of middle leaders so that they make a more effective contribution to monitoring and the development of teaching and learning in their areas of responsibility.
• Develop the role of governors by providing training so that they are able to challenge leaders rigorously about pupils’ achievement.
• Strengthen teaching by ensuring that:
  • the most able children in the early years are supported effectively to maximise their progress
  • teachers check pupils’ understanding in lessons and adapt their teaching in a timely way to maximise progress, especially for the most able pupils.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Good

• The school has improved rapidly over the past year. The headteacher and her senior leadership team set a clear and ambitious direction for the school. Together with governors, they have taken decisive steps to address the areas for improvement from the previous inspection. As a consequence, most teaching is effective and pupils achieve well.
• Improvement plans are sharply focused with clear targets and timescales to ensure that they have the required impact. Leaders monitor plans regularly and adjust actions to increase the effectiveness of their work. This gives them an accurate view of the school’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Staff morale is high and leaders have promoted effective team work across the school. As a result, teachers are supported, as well as challenged, to improve their practice. Through this approach, teachers are becoming strong, confident practitioners.
• Middle leaders, including some new to their role, work alongside colleagues to implement new initiatives to improve teaching, such as those to increase levels of challenge for all pupils. However, they are not yet fully involved or effective enough in monitoring teaching and its impact on pupils’ progress, which limits their ability to make further improvements.
• Systems for holding staff to account are rigorous, as shown in the improvement in pupils’ progress and attainment across the school. Leaders check pupils’ achievement carefully, ensuring that any help that is needed is put in place without delay.
• The curriculum is designed to capture pupils’ interests and motivates them well. Leaders ensure that there are purposeful opportunities for writing across subjects. This has a positive impact on standards of writing across the school. There is a good balance of enrichment and extra-curricular opportunities that broaden pupils’ horizons.
• The school promotes pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development well. British values such as tolerance and respect are deeply embedded in the curriculum. The school’s work to develop pupils’ resilience is effective, and pupils talk about ‘growing the spark of learning’ in their brains to help them become successful learners.
• Leaders set a positive culture to ensure that there is equality of opportunity and that any discriminatory behaviour is not tolerated. Support for pupils with SEND is carefully targeted to help them progress well. The strong provision for pupils’ emotional needs ensures that all pupils are successfully included in school life.
• The pupil premium is used effectively to provide good-quality support for disadvantaged pupils. This helps them to be successful both in their learning and in their personal development, enabling them to be part of everything the school has to offer.
• The sport premium is also used wisely to provide a wide range of opportunities for pupils to participate in sports clubs and to be physically active each day. Staff appreciate developing their skills by working alongside specialist coaches.
• Parents are extremely positive about the work of the school. They appreciate the approachability of the headteacher and her staff and welcome the regular ‘stay and do’ sessions which involve them in their children’s learning.
• Effective support from the local authority has been instrumental in helping the school to improve quickly. This support has helped leaders, including governors, to evaluate accurately the school’s performance and raise teachers’ expectations.

Governance of the school

• Governors are ambitious for the school and fully share the headteacher’s aspiring vision and direction. They are knowledgeable about the school’s work because leaders keep them well informed. They visit regularly to check for themselves and ask leaders pertinent questions about the learning environment. However, they do not challenge leaders rigorously enough about pupils’ achievement nor follow up any of their evaluations with further checks. This limits their impact in improving the school’s performance.
• Governors monitor the school’s budget closely to ensure that funds support improvements to teaching and learning. They know how additional funds are spent to help disadvantaged pupils and to develop sport in school.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.
• Leaders promote a strong culture where safety and support for pupils’ welfare are of the highest priority. All staff are vigilant and proactive in ensuring the well-being of pupils. They know what to do if any concerns are raised, and there are clear procedures to follow up any issues. Leaders are diligent in making sure that any vulnerable pupils and their families receive the help that they need from other agencies. All risks are thoroughly assessed and regularly updated, for example with regard to fire safety and educational visits.
• Recruitment arrangements follow the statutory guidance stringently. The school’s single central record had one or two minor administrative errors at the start of the inspection but these were rectified quickly. Staff are well trained in identifying possible signs of risk and harm, including how to keep pupils safe from extremism and radicalisation. They receive regular updates to keep their knowledge and skills current.
• Attendance is in line with the national average. Leaders take firm steps to eradicate any unnecessary absence, especially for a small minority of pupils whose attendance gives rise for concern. Their attendance is improving as a result.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Good

• Teaching is generally good, with many strong features, resulting in effective learning, positive behaviour and good progress across the school. Improvements over the past year ensure that teachers have good subject knowledge and nearly always set purposeful work that develops pupils’ knowledge, understanding and skills.
• The system for assessing achievement ensures that teachers are clear about pupils’ prior knowledge and starting points. This enables teachers to build on what pupils already know and can do. Teachers assess pupils’ work in line with school policies and give them regular feedback about how well they are doing.
• Teachers have high expectations of what pupils can achieve and strive to make the work both enjoyable, yet demanding. A good example of this is the enthusiastic way Year 2 pupils wrote letters to the inspectors telling them about their school. They applied their writing skills well, using interesting vocabulary and good sentence construction.
• Teaching assistants make a valuable contribution to learning. They work in close partnership with teachers to provide carefully planned support for pupils with SEND. They help pupils manage their feelings and build self-esteem well.
• Disadvantaged pupils benefit from focused support that ensures they make good progress and achieve as well as their classmates.
• The teaching of phonics is thorough, enabling pupils to develop fluency in reading. Comprehension skills are developed well through regular opportunities to read and discuss high-quality texts. Teachers monitor pupils’ progress in reading skills closely, and they ensure that teaching meets the needs of different groups of pupils well.
• Writing is taught effectively and teachers provide pupils with interesting opportunities to write across subjects, for example ‘eye witness’ accounts of the Great Fire of London in history. The new handwriting script has improved presentation in books, increasing pupils’ fluency well and promoting accurate spelling.
• The teaching of number is effective, and pupils quickly develop competence in calculation skills. Achievement has increased because of the wider opportunities for pupils to use reasoning skills, which deepens their understanding of mathematical concepts.
• On occasions, teachers do not check pupils’ understanding precisely enough in lessons. Consequently, they do not respond in a timely way to address any misconceptions or to provide additional challenge for the most able pupils. Sometimes, teaching in the early years does not challenge the most able children to the full.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Good

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is good.
• Pupils develop into confident learners through the positive relationships that exist in school and because of the praise and encouragement that they receive from staff. Pupils develop good personal skills because these skills are taught as an integral part of the school’s curriculum.
• Pupils, including disadvantaged pupils, benefit from the breakfast club that helps to improve attendance and provide a calm start to the day. Initiatives such as ‘The Den’, where skilled staff help pupils to manage and understand their feelings, enable pupils with emotional needs to overcome any anxieties and access learning successfully.
• Pupils say that they feel safe in school because they are well cared for by staff and trust them to help sort out any problems should they occur. They are clear that there is very little poor behaviour or bullying and that aggressive or derogatory language is not tolerated.
• E-safety has a high priority. Teachers show pupils how to stay safe online, both in and out of school. Pupils spoke to the inspectors knowledgeably about how to stay on the internet and how to report any concerns.
• The school provides sensitively for pupils from families with a parent serving in the armed services. The ‘Little Heroes’ club provides positive emotional support for pupils when parents are deployed abroad through video blogging, scrapbooks and the toy ‘army bear’ who travels along with parents.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils is good.
• Typically, pupils are friendly and polite. They are keen to talk to visitors to explain their learning, and they talk enthusiastically about how they try and challenge themselves to achieve highly.
• Pupils move around the school building sensibly. They cooperate well in lessons and settle quickly to their work. They listen respectfully to staff and to each other, and are keen to learn because they find their work interesting. The playground is an orderly, harmonious place because of the interesting range of activities and equipment that hold pupils’ interests.
• Behaviour is managed skilfully, which allows lessons to flow smoothly without interruption. Pupils like the ‘dojo’ system of rewards for trying hard to do their best in their work and behaviour. They undertake responsibilities such as school councillors or members of the ‘Playground Squad’ with a sense of pride.
• Very occasionally, a few pupils lose concentration and are inattentive in lessons, which slows their progress. This is why behaviour has been judged as good rather than outstanding.

Outcomes for pupils Good

• Over the past year, high expectations of pupils’ achievement and increasingly challenging work have resulted in strong progress. Because of this, attainment is rising across the school.
• The school’s own assessment information, the learning observed by inspectors and the work in pupils’ books show that current pupils make good progress across the curriculum. By the end of key stage 1, more pupils than previously are on track to achieve or exceed the expected standard for their age. This prepares them well for the next stage of their education.
• Attainment in the Year 1 phonics screening is above national figures, helping pupils to read fluently and accurately. Pupils read with clear understanding and are beginning to develop their skills of inference and deduction to derive deeper meaning.
• Pupils’ writing becomes more accomplished as they move across the school. They build their skills in grammar and punctuation well as they write across subjects in different styles, for example with diary entries and poems. The increased focus on accuracy has improved pupils’ spelling, and they make their work interesting through using imaginative vocabulary.
• Pupils demonstrate good fluency in number skills and enjoy the ‘hard’ challenges that teachers set. Increasingly, they are able to discuss their ideas and use reasoning, which deepens their mathematical understanding. For example, during the inspection, Year 2 pupils were engrossed in proving or disproving statements about odd and even numbers, testing out their ideas and justifying their thinking to each other as they worked. On occasions, a few pupils found the work too difficult, which slowed their progress.
• Disadvantaged pupils make good and sometimes better progress than others from similar starting points. Extra help to build confidence and improve skills in English and mathematics is successful in raising their achievement.
• Pupils with SEND make good progress due to the carefully structured support they receive. Even though the steps in progress can sometimes be quite small, according to the complexity of their needs, pupils are proud of their achievements and keen to try their best.
• The most able pupils, including the most able disadvantaged pupils, generally make good progress as their work usually requires them to apply their knowledge well. However, this good progress is not consistent. There are occasions when the most able pupils are not challenged well enough by their work, which limits their progress.

Early years provision Good

• Most children start school with the knowledge and skills that are broadly typical for their age. From their starting points, they make good progress in all areas of learning. Consequently, they start Year 1 as confident learners with the skills and knowledge typical for their age.
• The early years provision is well-led and managed. Staff have regular opportunities to train and develop their skills through observing effective practice of colleagues both in school and further afield, and by working with external consultants. Leaders have a sound view of the provision, and improvement plans are well focused on improving teaching.
• Parents are appreciative of the effective arrangements for starting school that ensure children settle quickly into their new routines. They speak highly of the approachability of staff and welcome the frequent opportunities to contribute to their children’s learning.
• Good attention is paid to safeguarding to ensure that children are kept safe both indoors and out, and during the Thursday ‘Forest School’ sessions. Staff are attentive to children’s welfare, so they feel happy and safe. ‘My daughter skips into school each day and comes out with a lovely smile,’ is how one parent expressed this.
• Children play together cooperatively and their behaviour is good. Staff ensure that any children with SEND, and others considered vulnerable, are supported sensitively and make good progress. Disadvantaged children are supported well and learning is adjusted to meet their needs, particularly in their language and personal development.
• Teaching is generally good. Mathematics development is strong and most children are suitably challenged. In one such instance, as some children were successful in the initial challenge of finding numbers that make ten, the teacher presented them with higher numbers to stretch their thinking to the full. This example of good teaching is not yet consistent, as on occasions, the most able children are not always challenged enough.
• Phonics teaching underpins the development of early reading and writing skills successfully. Handwriting is taught effectively and children soon become proficient in forming letters correctly and spelling common words. They enjoy writing and are proud of their work.
• Children also learn from following their own interests, and staff develop their knowledge and understanding well as they play. During the inspection, children were observed in the outdoor area measuring the driftwood ‘towers’ they had made. Staff skilfully developed their understanding of the world and of the concept of length as they played.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 126206 Wiltshire 10053206 This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005. Type of school Infant School category Age range of pupils Gender of pupils Maintained 4 to 7 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 229 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Headteacher Clare Churchill Natasha Dorrington Telephone number 01722 327 338 Website Email address www.harnhaminfants.org.uk head@harnham-inf.wilts.sch.uk Date of previous inspection 26 February 2018

Information about this school

• This is an average-sized school. Pupils are organised in 9 classes, three in each age group.
• The proportion of pupils with SEND is below average as is the proportion of disadvantaged pupils.
• The school manages a breakfast club each day.

Information about this inspection

• Inspectors observed pupils’ learning across the school. Most observations were carried out with senior leaders. In addition, they made visits to classrooms, the dining hall and the playground.
• Meetings were held with pupils, governors and school leaders. The lead inspector also met with an adviser from the local authority, which provides advisory support to the school.
• Inspectors spoke informally with parents at the start of the school day. They took account of the 51 responses to the online questionnaire, Parent View, as well as their written responses. They also took account of the 28 responses to the staff questionnaire.
• Inspectors observed the school’s work and looked at a range of documents, including the school’s improvement plans. They examined information on current pupils’ progress, minutes of the governing body meetings, safeguarding procedures and the plans for the use of the sport premium.
• Inspectors listened to pupils read, talked to them in classrooms and evaluated samples of their work.

Inspection team

Sandra Woodman, lead inspector Spencer Allen

Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector