Morley Newlands Academy Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Develop even further pupils’ confidence and skills as learners and questioners.
• Add even more to the school’s curriculum so that it further extends and develops pupils’ skills, knowledge and understanding.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Outstanding

• The principal’s sense of moral purpose is clear. He is driven by the conviction that every child can, and should, do well. He works in partnership with parents and carers, governors and his team of staff to make this happen. Since his appointment, supported by governors and the trust, he has acted decisively and bravely to address past weaknesses in the consistency and impact of teaching at the school. These actions have ensured rapid and sustained improvements across the school.
• Leaders and governors have a created a culture of high standards at the school. This is sustained through consistent and rigorous checking systems, focused support and training and, above all, on an insistence on high expectations for all.
• Leaders and governors know the school, its pupils, families and community very well. They use their detailed insights to ensure that the school not only provides an outstanding education for the children, but also serves its community. Parents welcome both the high standard of education and the close and open links between the school and the community.
• Leaders are careful, humane and challenging in the ways and means they use to deepen and extend staff expertise. The performance management of staff is focused on improving and extending outcomes for all pupils, particularly those who are disadvantaged. Staff are offered a range of opportunities to extend their expertise. They embrace these opportunities eagerly. Staff morale is high.
• The principal has encouraged leadership at all levels, including, increasingly, that of pupils. As a result, there is a strong sense of ownership and shared responsibility across the school. This stimulates and encourages debate and discussion throughout the staff. This debate and discussion has had a very positive impact on the quality of the provision at the school.
• Middle leaders are a real strength of the school. They are engaged, enthusiastic and highly skilled. They use their subject and phase knowledge to ensure that the progress of all pupils, including the most able, those who are disadvantaged and those who have SEN and/or disabilities is carefully monitored.
• The curriculum at the school is interesting. It is underpinned by a wide range of extra-curricular clubs and sports opportunities. Pupils enjoy and gain a great deal from the variety of their experiences in learning. They also welcome the opportunities they are offered to lead and organise charity and other events.
• Pupil premium funding is used very well by leaders and governors to ensure that barriers to learning and well-being are, as far as possible, removed. As a result, disadvantaged pupils do as well as, if not better than, their peers at the school and nationally. Similarly, the school uses its allocation of physical education (PE) funding most successfully to give pupils opportunities to extend their sports skills and experience and to develop existing staff’s expertise in teaching PE. The trust provides very effective support for a wide range of PE and related activities.
• The leadership of the provision for those pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities is expert and strong. The recently appointed leader has, very swiftly and effectively, made significant and positive changes to the ways in which the provision for these pupils is monitored, and its impact measured, so that it is as effective as it can be. This ensures that not only are these pupils making good progress from their starting points, but also that staff are increasingly more expert in meeting their needs in the classroom. The funding for this aspect of the school’s work is very well deployed.
• The school is very effective in developing pupils’ understanding of themselves as spiritual beings working within a moral framework. The school offers many opportunities for pupils to develop this sense of self in the service of others through voluntary and charity work.
• Parents are overwhelmingly pleased with the work of the school and the service and support it offers their children.

Governance of the school

• The governance of the school is dynamic, strategic and detailed. Governors are committed to improving their skills through regular training. They visit the school regularly to support its work. As a result, they are able to ask challenging questions of leaders in order to check that the school maintains, and further develops, its high standards.
• The principal and the wider leadership team, including middle leaders, provide governors with regular and detailed information on how well the school is doing. Governors, however, do not rely on this information solely to inform their judgements. They use many sources of evidence. There are regular, focused visits by governors to the school. Governors also take on responsibility for the oversight of a range of activities and subjects at the school. As a result, governors are very well informed and able to ask searching, questions about the effectiveness of the school’s work.
• The local governing body is very well supported by the trust. The trust scrutinises the work of the school regularly and effectively to ensure continued and sustained improvement.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective. A culture of safeguarding pervades the school. Leaders and governors see safeguarding as their paramount responsibility. Members of staff receive regular safeguarding training to make sure that this priority remains at the forefront of the school’s work.
• The school’s systems and checks are fit for purpose, systematically maintained and checked and regularly scrutinised by governors. There are robust procedures in place for the recording and reporting of any concerns that arise.
• All staff know all the pupils very well. As a result, pupils are surrounded by trusted adults to whom they can turn for help. Staff communicate and meet with parents regularly on matters to do with their children’s safety and well-being. Parents welcome this.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Outstanding

• Staff at the school, both teachers and teaching assistants, have consistently high expectations and excellent subject knowledge. They are determined that all pupils will do well. They fire pupils with their enthusiasm and genuine engagement with learning. Pupils rise enthusiastically to this level of challenge. Leaders, supported by the trust, ensure that all staff have regular opportunities to develop and further extend their knowledge and expertise.
• A culture of learning and enquiry is developing strongly across the school. Pupils increasingly know how to learn and where to find things out. This shared culture is evident across the school. It is particularly evident in children’s first steps in learning and enquiry in the Nursery and Reception years.
• Lessons are very well pitched so that all pupils, including the most able, are stretched and their skills, knowledge and understanding extended. Staff use expert questioning to develop pupils’ ideas and challenge their assumptions. Inspectors saw many examples of staff asking challenging ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions rather than the potentially more mundane ‘what’. Pupils, including the most able, rose confidently to the challenge.
• In mathematics lessons, pupils are moved on quickly and make very strong progress. They develop a wide range of mathematical skills and use them in the untying of increasingly complex and challenging problems.
• From their earliest times in the school, pupils are exposed to a rich and varied diet of language. The school’s conscious and targeted emphasis on developing, particularly oral, language means that pupils, and especially boys, make strong progress in their acquisition of language. This means that as they grow and develop, they are able to engage with, and manipulate, language with increasing confidence in a range of contexts.
• Teachers show high levels of skill in the ways they teach writing. This has a very positive impact on pupils’ facility with, and enjoyment of, writing. For example, inspectors saw a teacher exploring the impact and differences between using the participle and the past tense of the word ‘jog’. The teacher deftly helped her pupils to see how the shift between the two had an impact on the tone the writer was seeking. Pupils then applied this sort of device to their own writing.
• The teaching of reading is very effective and instils in pupils a real pleasure in reading. From the Nursery and Reception classes onwards, books are readily available and reading is encouraged and enjoyed. Teachers set time aside for regular reading sessions with a focus on developing and deepening their skills as readers of a wide range of writing in prose, poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Pupils’ increasing appreciation of the range of strategies writers use to create effects on readers is having a marked and positive impact on pupils’ own writing.
• The teaching of the wider curriculum is informed and interesting. Pupils have opportunities through the school’s creative curriculum to study subjects beyond English, mathematics and science. Staff have the same high expectations for these subjects as they do for the ‘core’ subjects. There is evidence, in pupils’ creative curriculum books, that they have opportunities to explore, often writing at appropriate length, in subjects such as history and religious education. Because of this, particularly in key stage 2, pupils are developing a wide range of skills, knowledge and understanding in a wide range of subjects.
• The school’s learning environment is lively and helpful. It is conducive to learning. Through the use of learning walls, the school supports and develops pupils’ growing independence as learners. They can find things out for themselves. The attractive displays also celebrate pupils’ success as well as underlining and reminding pupils of the world beyond Morley Newlands.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Outstanding

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is outstanding.
• The school creates a secure environment where pupils are able to thrive and learn. Pupils are encouraged to explore ideas and challenge stereotypes. They are open, friendly and kind. The school provides careful, sensitive support for pupils who need additional care to keep them on the right track.
• Pupils who from time to time need additional support are very well cared for and supported by the school. Leaders have put in place very rigorous systems, rooted in clear moral purpose, to help ensure that any barriers to the learning and well-being of pupils are identified and systematically overcome.
• The school’s work with families is a real strength of the school. Through staff such as the school’s support officer, parents are offered many opportunities to work with their children to help them ensure that they make the most of their time in school. Parents welcome this aspect of the school’s work.
• The school offers a range of opportunities before, after and during the school day for pupils to reflect on their learning and well-being. ‘The Hub’, for example, is a place in the school where, during lunchtime, pupils can go to talk about how they are doing and, if necessary, seek support.
• Pupils report that there is no bullying at the school. Inspection findings show that incidents of bullying are now very rare because of leaders’ actions. Pupils are very clear about the forms that bullying can take. They said that if they felt unhappy, or concerned, they would tell an adult at the school. Pupils reported that they were very confident that staff would deal with it promptly and effectively.
• Pupils are extremely well informed about how to keep themselves safe at school and when out and about in the community. They also know how to keep safe online. This is because the school runs regular sessions, often including outside speakers, to help ensure that pupils know about risk and how to mitigate it. They are well equipped to deal with the increasingly complex world we inhabit.
• The school offers many opportunities, both in and out of the class room, to help its pupils make sense of the world. The school asks itself ‘big questions’ such as ‘Where do I fit in the world?’ Then, through a range of carefully planned and age-appropriate activities, pupils explore the topic, reflecting, discussing and coming up with tentative answers.
• Pupils know how to keep themselves healthy and adopt healthy life styles. School meals are nutritious and well-balanced. Pupils are well aware of what constitutes a healthy lifestyle. There are many opportunities for pupils to engage in sport and similar physical activities. The take-up of these opportunities is high. It is carefully monitored to ensure that all pupils, including those who are disadvantaged, can take advantage of this vital aspect of the school’s work.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils is outstanding. Pupils are confident, self-assured and sensitive to the needs of others. They are very proud of their school and wear their uniform smartly. There is no litter.
• Pupils have excellent attitudes to learning. All pupils want to learn and improve because of the dedicated teaching and care they receive from staff at the school. They are increasingly taking more control of, and responsibility for, their own learning.
• Pupils enjoy coming to school. Absenteeism is reducing rapidly. Attendance is improving strongly and is now very close to the national average for all pupils. The school provides very effective and carefully targeted support for pupils and families that, from time to time, find regular attendance challenging.
• From the Reception class onwards, children and pupils talk with confidence and real enthusiasm about their learning.

Outcomes for pupils Outstanding

• Inspection evidence shows that, throughout each year group and across all subjects, pupils make sustained and, often, substantial progress from their starting points. This is because they are taught extremely effectively and are eager to learn.
• The school has worked effectively to address the historically weak outcomes evident in some parts of the school, before the appointment of the current leadership team. Evidence from a wide range, and large number, of pupils’ books and folders scrutinised during the inspection, showed remarkably strong progress. For example, inspectors examined the progress made by pupils currently in Years 5 and 6, across a range of subjects, since these same pupils entered Year 3. A significant number of pupils showed very strong progress. This was particularly the case for pupils who had not achieved well in their key stage 1 tests when they were in Year 2.
• The school-wide focus on reading is having a very strong effect on both pupils’ skills as readers and their love of reading for its own sake. Pupils say that they enjoy reading and the high profile it has at the school. Books and discussion about books suffuse the school. There are daily opportunities for reading alone, in groups and as a class. For example, inspectors saw a truly enthralling session of teacher-led reading that had pupils rapt and engaged, talking and speculating about the conflict between Beowulf and Grendel.
• Disadvantaged pupils do well. Staff and leaders know these pupils and their circumstances well because of the rigorous monitoring systems the school has in place. They use this very detailed knowledge to remove, wherever possible, barriers to learning. They also ensure that disadvantaged pupils have the same access to the wide range of extra-curricular and other opportunities enjoyed by their peers. The school very actively encourages these pupils to take up the opportunities that they are offered.
• Pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities make very good progress from their starting points. Staff focus their support very carefully. This is because staff and leaders use their very detailed knowledge to focus on areas of strength and remove, wherever possible, barriers to learning. Links with parents and families are strong and also help ensure good progress.
• The most able pupils, including those who are disadvantaged, make outstanding progress. Both in lessons and through extra-curricular opportunities, these pupils enjoy a rich and varied diet that stimulates and enthuses them.
• Pupils make very strong progress in a range of subjects. In science, for example, scrutiny of work books showed that pupils learn a range of scientific skills: how to investigate, set out their findings and draw clear, accurate tables and diagrams.
• Pupils are very well prepared for next steps in their learning. Year 6 pupils show an eagerness and a real thirst for and pleasure in knowledge. The sophistication and depth of their knowledge across the curriculum and their self-confident joy in learning mean that they should get off to a flying start at secondary school.

Early years provision Outstanding

• The leadership of the early years provision is outstanding. The leader is skilled, knowledgeable and imaginative. She leads the team with a real sense of purpose. Her vision, skill and expertise and those of her team also play a very positive role in supporting teaching, learning and assessment across the rest of the school.
• The leader ensures that the team is very carefully and effectively trained and deployed. Staff know the children very well. Information about children is gathered rigorously and used very effectively to inform teaching and appropriate and stimulating activities. The leader effectively checks the accuracy of judgements about children’s progress through regular meetings within school and across the trust.
• Children join the early years provision with variable levels of skills. They make very strong progress, including those who are disadvantaged. They are extremely well prepared academically and socially for the next stage of their education. The 2017 assessments show that 69% of children in Reception reached a good level of development.
• Children settle well into the Nursery and Reception classes because the transition arrangements focus on ensuring that children make a flying start when they enter the school’s early years provision. Staff use their knowledge of the partner nursery settings very well. Staff reduce both parents’ and children’s potential anxiety about starting school through a range of imaginative and carefully targeted strategies.
• Safeguarding is effective in early years. Staff are carefully and well trained. Children feel safe, and are safe. The systems, policies and checks that help ensure that children are safe are rigorously applied. The children are very well behaved and kind to each other. They learn together well, taking turns and learning the value of collaboration and sharing.
• Teaching in early years is outstanding. Staff are skilled. They prepare very carefully and focus on what children need to make rapid progress. Children learn in a stimulating environment which is lively, engaging and suited to the needs of the children’s development, safety and well-being.
• The development of language skills is a particular strength of early years. Staff are very skilled at developing and deepening children’s use of, and facility with, language through, for example, the deft use of questions to really make children think and enjoy themselves.
• Links with parents are strong. Parents reported that they were very pleased with the early years provision and the way their children had settled and were taking pleasure in learning. They also welcomed the regular updates they have on their children’s progress and the very detailed, open and easy communications that existed.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 141797 Leeds 10042186 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 converter 3 to 11 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 607 Appropriate authority Board of trustees Chair Principal Telephone number Website Email address Jonathan Fyffe Simon McCarthy 0113 323 1890 morleynewlands.leeds.sch.uk info@morleynewlands.leeds.sch.uk Date of previous inspection Not previously inspected

Information about this school

• Morley Newlands Academy is a larger than average primary school catering for a community that is largely White British.
• The school meets the government’s current floor standards, which set the minimum expectations for pupils’ progress and attainment.
• The proportion of disadvantaged pupils in the school is above average. The proportion of pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities is also above average. The proportion that have a statement of SEN or an education, health and care plan is below average.
• There is a 78-place nursery on the school site.
• The school is part of The Gorse Academies Trust. Members of the trust sit on the local governing body of this school.

Information about this inspection

• Inspectors observed teaching and learning in all classes. Approximately 50% of these observations were undertaken jointly with members of the leadership team.
• Accompanied by members of the senior team, inspectors scrutinised a large sample of pupils’ work in books covering a range of subjects across the curriculum.
• Inspectors met with senior and middle leaders, a group of staff and two groups of pupils. The lead inspector met with governors, including the chair of governors and with the school’s improvement partner. The lead inspector also met with the chief executive of The Gorse Academies Trust.
• Inspectors observed pupils during assembly time, during breaks and at lunchtime. They spoke with pupils informally across the two days of the inspection. Inspectors also listened to pupils read and discussed their reading with them.
• Inspectors considered the views of parents through the 44 responses to the online questionnaire, Parent View, 39 text comments and through meetings with parents at the start and end of the school days. Inspectors also took into account the views of the 73 pupils and 42 staff who responded to online surveys during the inspection.
• Inspectors scrutinised a wide range of documentation, including that relating to safeguarding, pupils’ outcomes, the school’s curriculum and the work of governors and The Gorse Academies Trust.

Inspection team

Mark Evans, lead inspector Simon Bissett Michael Tull Linda Collier

Her Majesty’s Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector