Kingshurst Primary School Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Improve the quality of leadership and management by ensuring that:
  • leaders’ action plans are more specific and include measurable success criteria that are explicitly linked to outcomes for pupils leaders carefully evaluate pupils’ assessment information to determine how effective they have been in improving teaching and learning.
• Improve the school’s governance by ensuring that:
  • governors take a more proactive role in supporting leaders to drive school improvement
  • governors ask more challenging questions of leaders and hold them to account more rigorously for the achievement of pupils
  • the school’s website is compliant with the Department for Education requirements for publishing information.
• Improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment by:
  • checking that all pupils read regularly and develop positive attitudes to reading
  • increasing the level of challenge in lessons so all pupils, and particularly the most able, make better rates of progress
  • ensuring that teachers develop pupils’ spelling, handwriting and grammar skills so they can achieve better outcomes in writing.
• Improve pupils’ behaviour by ensuring that there are more purposeful play activities available at lunchtime to occupy pupils.
• Improve attendance so that rates of persistent absence reduce and all pupils, particularly those that are disadvantaged, attend school regularly. 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 Requires improvement

• Leaders and governors have not yet secured good teaching across the school. Changes in staffing, as the school grows from two-form entry to three, and the restructuring of the leadership team, have resulted in a period of turbulence. Very recently, the headteacher, well supported by the deputy headteacher, has been effective in building a stronger staff team and bringing greater consistency and improvements to the quality of teaching. However, there is still further work to be done before all pupils make consistently good progress.
• Over the last few years, senior leaders have invested considerable time in getting the environment for learning right and tackling behaviour issues which were barriers to improvement. They have been largely successful in achieving their aims, although their focus on behaviour has resulted in leaders paying less attention to the progress pupils make. Now leaders are rightly focused on improving the quality of teaching.
• Leaders have only recently begun to use pupil assessment information with appropriate accuracy to drive improvement. As a result, leaders’ previous actions have not been fully effective in stemming the decline in performance since 2014. The school improvement plan is not tightly matched to the specific areas that most need attention.
• The school’s self-evaluation focuses too much on tasks that leaders have completed. It does not accurately reflect the school’s current performance. Nonetheless, the headteacher recognises the school’s shortfalls and has a clear understanding of what needs doing to raise the achievement of pupils.
• Phase leaders’ action plans for improvement do not yet outline clearly enough what needs to be done in order to improve teaching and increase rates of pupils’ progress. They are not easily able to measure the success of their work because the anticipated outcomes leaders are checking against are often not precise enough.
• Disadvantaged pupils receive a wealth of additional adult support through the pupil premium funding, but its effectiveness on their progress is variable. Leaders do not yet evaluate the success of this extra support with sufficient robustness. As a result, not all disadvantaged pupils make good progress.
• Leaders have effective systems in place to identify and plan support for pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities. Funding is used with varying degrees of success to help these pupils achieve. For example, staff undertake regular training which has a positive effect on teaching and helps pupils to make better progress. However, leaders are less clear about the impact of some interventions.
• The local authority provides a moderate level of support to the school. Local authority school improvement advisers carried out a review of the school in October 2016 and provided some helpful recommendations for improvement. Governors have not yet acted upon the findings of the review.
• Leaders have recently put in place a more effective assessment system to check pupils’ learning, track progress, and provide extra support when needed. Previously, leaders did not use this information quickly enough to tackle gaps in learning. Phase leaders now have greater involvement in checking pupils’ progress and the quality of teaching. Teachers benefit from the support and guidance they provide.
• Leaders provide a balanced curriculum enriched with a wide range of visits and extra-curricular activities. These experiences benefit pupils and enable them to develop their skills and knowledge in other subjects. For example, older pupils talked excitedly about their trip to Solihull Jewish Community Centre. They were able to describe various Jewish artefacts correctly and make comparisons with other places of worship. The pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is enhanced through these visits. They are well prepared for life in modern Britain.
• The headteacher has invested time in establishing a new leadership team, providing them with high-quality training so they become effective in their roles. Several leaders are relatively new to post, although they are already having an impact on improving the quality of teaching and learning.
• Leaders are visible around the school. They have worked hard to develop positive relationships with parents. The school’s popular ‘inspire workshops’ bring together parents and pupils to work on mini projects and learn collaboratively. The majority of parents who spoke to inspectors said they had no concerns about the school.
• Leaders make effective use of the PE and sport premium funding to provide a specialist coach and ensure that pupils experience a wide range of different sports, including rowing, tennis and gymnastics. The majority of pupils take part in at least one club and achieve impressive results in local sporting fixtures. For example, Kingshurst has won the North Solihull Sports School of the Year award for three years in succession.

Governance of the school

• Governors do not make sufficient demands of senior leaders and hold them to account for pupils’ inconsistent progress. As a result, they do not effectively support the school in helping it to improve. Governors are not yet asking enough challenging questions of senior leaders about aspects of the school’s performance that really matter, in particular the achievement of pupils. They rely too heavily on information provided by the headteacher.
• Governors’ evaluation of the impact of pupil premium funding is limited. For example, they are unclear as to whether or not the funding is helping to increase rates of attendance for disadvantaged pupils. However, governors have a better understanding of how the PE and sport premium funding has been successful in raising pupils’ participation rates in sport.
• The school’s website does not comply with the Department for Education guidance on what schools should publish about the pupil premium funding, exam and assessment results, and governors’ information. As a consequence, parents are not as informed as they should be.
• Governors are committed to the school and supportive of leaders’ work. They undertake training and visit the school regularly to participate in a range of monitoring activities. This helps them to have a growing understanding of the school’s strengths and areas for development. Governors also attend community events in order to build positive relationships with parents.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.
• Leaders place a high priority on ensuring that pupils are kept safe. They listen carefully to what pupils say about how safe they feel and act quickly to put right any concerns. Safeguarding procedures are rigorous and permeate all aspects of school life. All staff have had appropriate training and receive regular updates to enable them to identify children that may be at risk of harm. Leaders have completed training on safer recruitment to reduce the chance of unsuitable people working with pupils.
• Those responsible for safeguarding work effectively with external agencies to maintain and promote pupils’ well-being. Record-keeping is thorough and shows that actions are followed up. Leaders act decisively to ensure the safety of vulnerable pupils.
• Leaders have thorough systems in place for monitoring attendance and intervening quickly when it falls below an acceptable level. They use a wide range of incentives and sanctions, including legal action, to try and improve the attendance of pupils who are persistently absent. However, despite leaders’ best efforts, attendance overall is below the national figure and levels of persistent absence remain high.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Requires improvement

• Changes in staffing and a lack of consistency in good-quality teaching have resulted in pupils making less than good progress over time. In particular, teachers have not provided enough challenge for the most able pupils, including those who are disadvantaged.
• Teachers plan lessons to meet the differing needs of pupils. However, sometimes teachers set work at the beginning of a lesson which is too easy for some pupils. This is because teachers have not taken sufficiently into account pupils’ prior knowledge. As a result, this hampers pupils’ progress.
• The teaching of writing remains variable in its effectiveness. Pupils’ handwriting is not always well formed and easy to read, and in some classes it has deteriorated over time. For too many pupils, their spelling is not at an acceptable standard. Teachers do not consistently pick up on spelling, grammar and punctuation errors in pupils’ work. This means that pupils continue to make the same errors repeatedly. In other classes, pupils’ written work is well organised, neatly presented and reflects a variety of writing styles and contexts.
• Teachers ask a range of questions to check that pupils understand what they are being taught. Sometimes teachers miss opportunities to develop learning when pupils give an incorrect answer during whole-class sessions.
• Not all teachers place sufficient emphasis on developing and encouraging pupils’ regular reading for enjoyment. Some pupils are excited about reading and can talk confidently about different authors. Other pupils told inspectors that they rarely read independently. Leaders have implemented a range of strategies to try and promote reading, including one class per week visiting the local library.
• Pupils, including those who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, use classroom resources well to support their learning. This is particularly the case in mathematics. For example, lower-attaining pupils could solve simple fractions of numbers well using apparatus.
• In mathematics, most pupils are beginning to make faster progress in their learning because skills and understanding are taught progressively. Pupils are beginning to develop their reasoning skills and are expected to explain their thinking. For example, in a key stage 2 lesson on developing mental strategies, pupils were expected to prove how they arrived at their answer.
• Teachers usually select topic materials that interest and enthuse pupils. They plan engaging lessons which help pupils to make purposeful links between different areas of the curriculum. For example, older pupils successfully developed their creative skills through the design of a mythical beast in literacy.
• In lessons, pupils can explain what they are learning and know the steps to achieve success because teachers describe clearly what pupils are learning to do. Some teachers encourage pupils to reflect on their learning through effective questioning.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare

Personal development and welfare Requires improvement

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is good.
• Pupils are keen to contribute to class discussions. They display positive attitudes to learning and are eager to share their work. Pupils recognise each other’s achievements. For example, pupils spontaneously congratulated each other when they accomplished a difficult task.
• The school council plays an active role in collecting the views of fellow pupils and sharing this information with the headteacher. Leaders make changes to the school’s practices as a result of feedback from the school council.
• In some classes, teachers encourage pupils to take pride in the accuracy and presentation of their work, and to focus on quality rather than quantity. However, in other classes pupils’ books are less well presented.
• The dedicated school’s inclusion team offers highly effective support to vulnerable pupils. Adults throughout the school establish good nurturing relationships with pupils. They take time to get to know the pupils in their care.
• Leaders ensure that there are effective transition visits for Year 6 pupils in preparation for moving on to secondary school.
• Teachers ensure that the curriculum supports pupils’ personal, social, health and emotional development well. They are taught about topics such as racism, fire safety and e-safety. Pupils can explain the important messages that they have learned from these topics. For example, pupils knew about the dangers of the internet and how to stay safe when online.
• Some parents expressed concerns about bullying in Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View. However, pupils say bullying is uncommon and they feel safe in school. Inspection findings show that when there is a case of bullying identified, leaders deal with it swiftly and take appropriate action.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils requires improvement.
• Most pupils behave well in and around school. However, this is not yet consistent across all classes. In a few classes, pupils do not always listen attentively when a member of staff is giving an explanation or instruction.
• Most pupils play well together at break and enjoy taking turns on the outdoor climbing frame. Pupils’ behaviour at lunchtime, although it has improved, is still not consistently good. Lunchtime issues can spill over into the afternoon because play is not as purposeful as it could be. Leaders have established an effective system of ‘peer mediators’. These are specially trained pupils who offer support and guidance to others experiencing difficulties on the playground.
• Leaders’ efforts to improve behaviour are proving effective. The previous high levels of behaviour incidents have reduced over time. Leaders collate information about pupils’ behaviour to form action plans which support individual pupils. Pupils are clear about the school’s expectations because they are consistently enforced by most staff.
• Staff are very capable at dealing with the most challenging behaviours exhibited by a small minority of pupils. They skilfully and sensitively help these pupils to manage their feelings in a safe environment.
• The number of exclusions remains high, although it has reduced considerably over time. Leaders have plans in place to further reduce the exclusion rate.

Outcomes for pupils Requires improvement

• From their different starting points, not enough pupils, including those who are disadvantaged, make good progress over time. The results of national tests and assessments for the last two years show that the progress pupils made across key stage 2 in writing and mathematics was below that of all pupils nationally, and well below in reading.
• Last year, national curriculum assessment results for Year 6 show that standards in reading, writing and mathematics were below the national average. In 2016, the proportion of Year 2 pupils that attained the expected standard in reading, writing and mathematics was broadly in line with the national figure, although weakest in reading.
• The progress of current pupils is uneven because the quality of teaching is not yet good in all classes. In a few key stage 2 classes where there is the strongest teaching, current pupils are making good progress. Work in pupils’ books and visits to lessons confirm that the progress of pupils in mathematics, particularly in key stage 2, is improving at a faster rate than reading and writing.
• The most able pupils do not make enough progress in reading, writing or mathematics because work is not challenging enough in the majority of classes. This means that very few pupils attain the higher standards by the end of key stage 2. In 2016, there were no pupils who were assessed as working at greater depth in writing or mathematics by the end of key stage 1.
• The progress of current Year 1 pupils in developing their phonics knowledge shows that teachers have put in place effective measures, so more are on track to achieve the expected standard in the future. Prior to 2016, Year 1 pupils achieved well in the phonics check. Their performance dipped in 2016 and fell below the national average.
• Current pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities are making progress, although this is not yet consistently good. This is because leaders do not have a full understanding about which interventions are most effective and which are not. Sometimes, teachers move pupils on to work too quickly before they have a secure grasp of the necessary basics.
• Pupils achieve well in physical education and school sport. The school has been awarded the School Games Gold Award.

Early years provision Requires improvement

• The leadership of early years requires improvement because, until very recently, there has not been a sharp enough focus on what teachers need to do to ensure that children make good progress. Leaders now have a much clearer understanding of the strengths in the early years and the areas for development. The new leadership is aspirational and determined to raise levels of achievement. Plans are in place to tackle weaknesses.
• A high proportion of children enter the early years with a lower level of skills, knowledge and understanding than is typical for their age. From their starting points, they make variable progress and some begin to catch up. However, too many children are not fully prepared for Year 1 by the time they leave the Reception class. The proportion of children achieving a good level of development is gradually improving, although remains below the national figure.
• Teaching in the early years requires improvement. Children’s learning journeys do not consistently demonstrate good progress over time. Their writing is developing too slowly because there are missed opportunities for specific focused teaching. For example, some children form letters incorrectly repeatedly over time with minimal intervention from the teacher.
• Positive partnerships with parents encourage involvement in their children’s learning. Parents contribute to records of their child’s progress through writing ‘magic moments’ when something special is achieved outside school. Parents spoke positively about their children’s start at school. They comment that staff are approachable and keep them well informed.
• Staff have established some good routines and children develop their independence as a result. For example, children self-register for their lunch choices by writing their names. Sometimes, children do not show good learning behaviours in class when they have free choice. They lose focus because tasks are not always engaging enough.
• Children enjoy playing outside and readily take part in imaginative play. They take turns and play fairly, resolving disagreements sensibly. However, the range of resources is not always well organised and enticing to children.
• In the Nursery class, practitioners encourage children to participate in a range of activities, enabling them to explore using their senses and cultivate curiosity. Staff develop children’s language skills through good questioning.
• Teachers create opportunities for children to share and celebrate their work. Each child is provided with an individual wall space where they can showcase their achievements. Children’s self-esteem is increased as a result, and they show pride in their work.
• Nurturing early years staff are attentive to the pastoral needs of children. This supports children’s personal development well. Safeguarding is effective in the early years.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 135139 Solihull 10025398 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 Community school 3 to 11 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 511 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Headteacher Telephone number Website Email address David Threlkeld Chris Sperry 0121 788 6510 www.kingshurst.solihull.sch.uk 34office@kingshurst.solihull.sch.uk Date of previous inspection 13–14 November 2012

Information about this school

• The school does not meet requirements on the publication of information about the pupil premium funding, exam and assessment results, or governors’ information and duties on its website.
• This school is larger than the average-sized primary school.
• The school has a Nursery managed by the governing body.
• The large majority of pupils are of White British background. The remainder come from a range of other backgrounds, including African and Caribbean.
• A very small proportion of pupils speak English as an additional language.
• The proportion of pupils supported with a statement of special educational needs, an education, health and care plan or through special educational needs support is above the national average.
• The proportion of disadvantaged pupils is well above the national average.
• The school meets the government’s current floor standards which set the minimum expectation for pupils’ attainment and progress.

Information about this inspection

• The inspection team observed learning in all year groups, including carrying out some joint observations with senior leaders. Inspectors reviewed pupils’ work in books and on classroom walls.
• Inspectors talked to pupils during lessons, around school and during planned meetings to gather their views.
• Inspectors held meetings with the headteacher, other leaders, school staff and a representative from the local authority. An inspector also met with members of the governing body.
• Responses from 15 parents and carers to the Ofsted online questionnaire (Parent View) were analysed. Inspectors also gathered the views of parents at the beginning of each school day.
• Inspectors heard pupils read.
• The inspection team looked at a wide range of information, including the school’s website, development plan, assessment information from its pupil tracking system and anonymised performance management documentation. Inspectors reviewed documentation relating to safeguarding, as well as the minutes of the governing body.

Inspection team

Tim Hill, lead inspector Matt Meckin Justine Lomas Mark Bailie Her Majesty’s Inspector Her Majesty’s Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector