Havelock Academy Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Improve the quality of teaching and learning so that all pupils, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds and pupils with SEND, make at least good progress by:
  • making sure that leaders at all levels focus their quality assurance checks on the progress pupils make
  • making sure teachers use progress information reliably to plan lessons that are accurately pitched to meet pupils’ needs and deepen their learning
  • sharing examples of strong practice across subject teams to establish greater consistency in expectations, subject knowledge and effective teaching and learning skills.
• Improve behaviour and attendance by:
  • ensuring that all members of staff apply the school’s behaviour policy consistently
  • ensuring that leaders take swift action to identify and deal with instances of low-level disruption
  • developing further ways to work with families and agencies to improve attendance.
• Improve the quality and consistency of leadership and management by:
  • ensuring that plans for improvement focus on the most pressing priorities and that progress to achieving them is monitored and evaluated rigorously
  • using, more effectively, information about the progress, behaviour and attendance of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and pupils with SEND to enable these pupils to make good progress
  • ensuring that pupils’ personal development, especially around healthy relationships, is developed as the curriculum undergoes further change.
• Improve the effectiveness of the sixth form by:
  • developing the skills of teachers to plan learning and progression with precision, so that students make better progress
  • ensuring that all students have suitable opportunities to experience the world of work
  • ensuring that all students have ample opportunities to engage with wider issues in society to promote their personal development and well-being.
• An external review of governance should be undertaken in order to assess how this aspect of leadership and management may be improved.
• An external review of the school’s use of the pupil premium 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

• The quality of education has declined since the previous inspection. The quality of teaching is variable and, as a consequence, pupils have not made the progress of which they are capable.
• The quality of leadership across the school is variable. Senior leaders have not acted quickly enough to avert the decline in standards. The effectiveness of middle leaders is inconsistent. Some middle leaders have acted more quickly than others to begin to address poor teaching in their areas. In other cases, weaknesses in teaching have not been addressed well enough and have been accentuated by instability in staffing.
• The leadership and management of behaviour and attendance has not brought about the desired improvement. Some pupils do not behave well enough in lessons. The proportion of pupils who do not attend regularly enough remains above the national average.
• Leaders have not focused sufficiently on whether pupils are making good progress when they check on the quality of teaching. Instead, they focus too much on how far staff comply with policies. This means that leaders and those responsible for governance have, until recently, gained an inaccurate picture of the impact of teaching on pupils’ progress.
• Staff teaching outside their specialism are not always provided with the additional support they need to deliver the school’s new curriculum effectively. Staff understand the importance of the curriculum changes. However, the move to reinstate professional development opportunities to implement curriculum changes is only just beginning to take shape.
• Leaders’ use of the pupil premium funding and Year 7 catch-up funding shows inconsistent effect. Success has been achieved in building positive attitudes to school life through wider cultural visits and the extensive range of extra-curricular activities. However, differences in progress between disadvantaged pupils and their peers have not closed.
• The recently appointed acting principal has steadied the ship. She has begun to harness the commitment and good will of the staff to improve outcomes for pupils.
• With subject specialists from the trust, school leaders have introduced more rigorous schemes of learning. These are enabling pupils to acquire the range of knowledge and skills they need to illustrate their understanding in preparation for external examinations. Schemes of learning are common to the trust’s family of schools, so that effective practice in delivering them can be shared.
• As the new curriculum is rolled out, leaders have introduced a more rigorous assessment framework to accompany it. The framework is shared across the trust’s schools, so that school leaders can check that their assessments are accurate and fair. As a result, senior leaders have begun to have more confidence in the reliability of the information they gather about pupils’ progress. They, and the newly formed academy scrutiny committee, can now hold leaders at all levels better to account for pupils’ progress.
• Parents and carers have mixed views of the school and its leadership. Some remark on the recent appointment of the acting principal as an important positive milestone. Overall, parents feel that their children are well cared for and supported. A few parents say they are frustrated with the school’s communication, for example about support for pupils with SEND and how promptly the school deals with bullying. Others were keen to inform inspectors of how much they appreciated the school’s work to support their children.

Governance of the school

• Governors did not pursue their understanding of pupils’ achievement with enough rigour during the past academic year. While they received and considered information about pupils’ progress, they accepted too readily that it was accurate, and so formed an overoptimistic view of the school.
• Governors demonstrate an honest appreciation of the school’s recent performance. Following two years where progress was broadly average, governors know that the below average progress in 2018 was not acceptable.
• In collaboration with the trust, governors have concentrated their work on the academic performance of the school, through the academy scrutiny committee. The shared assessment framework now provides greater confidence that governors, and members of the trust’s board, will be able to support and challenge leaders with greater effect.
• The support and challenge provided by the trust has not been effective in improving school performance in recent years. However, since September 2018, intensive support for coherence in subject curriculum plans and assessment procedures has begun to bring consistency to pupils’ learning. However, improvements in the quality of teaching remain variable, especially in those subjects where the school struggles to employ subject specialists.
• Those responsible for governance have not been distracted from ensuring that keeping pupils safe is the priority of the school, as they deal with issues around teaching and learning and pupils’ achievement.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective. There is a culture of vigilance at the school, led by the safeguarding team. They ensure that staff are well trained and know how to bring any concerns about pupils to their attention. This helps to ensure that pupils get early help when they need it.
• Safeguarding leaders pursue their concerns with a wide range of teams and agencies. They analyse information for any patterns of concerns, so that they can liaise with other teams, including the local police. Leaders adapt learning and support for pupils based on their analyses. As a result, pupils are helped to understand the risks to their well-being, for example regarding the misuse of drugs or alcohol.
• Pupils report that they feel safe in school. They say staff listen and help them if they have a concern. They say the school helps them to understand how to keep safe, including when they use digital technologies.
• Those responsible for governance receive regular updates and analysis of safeguarding concerns. They challenge school leaders about how well teams work with other agencies, for example. They also ensure that all the required pre-employment checks are carried out and recorded appropriately on a single central register.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Requires improvement

• The quality of teaching and learning is inconsistent. There is variation in the quality of teaching, both across and within subjects. Too often, expectations of what pupils can achieve are too low.
• Teachers do not make precise enough use of current progress information to plan activities that challenge pupils consistently and deepen their understanding. Pupils’ work shows that the most able pupils are not challenged well enough.
• In addition, when lessons are inaccurately matched to take account of pupils’ previous learning, pupils can become restless and engage in low-level disruption. At times, tasks are too demanding, especially for some pupils with lower prior attainment. In such cases, learning is not well supported. For example, extended reading in some subjects is sometimes too difficult. Reading tasks are not broken down and pupils are not supported well enough with their comprehension.
• Most teachers demonstrate good subject knowledge, but do not consistently refine their planning to break down activities. As a result, some pupils make uneven progress and do not acquire knowledge and skills coherently enough.
• Where teaching is weak, teachers provide too few opportunities for pupils to review their learning. On other occasions, teachers misjudge how long tasks should take. This slows pupils’ learning.
• Pupils’ work, across a range of subjects, shows that there are relatively few opportunities for pupils to write at length. Consequently, they do not explore their subject knowledge and demonstrate their understanding or practise important examination skills.
• Where extended writing opportunities were used effectively, pupils improved their learning quickly through their dedicated improvement and reflection time. However, this technique was not used equally well across all subjects.
• Staff develop very positive relationships with pupils, but do not always capitalise on these to build pupils’ resilience to learning and raise expectations. Examples of cover work for absent members of staff pointed to a lack of focused tasks to challenge pupils’ learning and move them forward.
• Strong examples of effective questioning, seen in a range of subjects, were used to go beyond checking if pupils had understood correctly. In these cases, questioning was probing, requiring pupils to clarify and refine their responses and demonstrate their understanding explicitly. This strong practice was, however, not the norm.
• Effective use of planning by some teachers, which corresponded to different abilities and prior learning, enabled pupils to work through tasks at different levels that were well suited to their needs. Similarly, where teachers planned to use the skills of teaching assistants wisely, pupils’ learning was well supported.
• In general, pupils benefit from the homework, which staff set regularly and is used to consolidate pupils’ learning.
• Staff make sure that they highlight important vocabulary in their subjects and topics. For example, Year 9 pupils in food technology and Year 10 pupils in a hair and beauty lesson demonstrated their understanding well by using subject-specific vocabulary to discuss and write about their learning. However, more broadly, pupils’ reading is less well supported because staff do not check that the books pupils choose to read are accessible. In some instances, pupils choose books where they could not make sense of their reading.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Requires improvement

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare requires improvement. Pupils do not consistently demonstrate their readiness to apply themselves to, and take responsibility for, their learning.
• Leaders do not ensure that pupils have sufficient time to develop their understanding of healthy personal relationships.
• Around the school, pupils behave well. They show consideration for each other and move around carefully. They show respect for their environment.
• Pupils demonstrate good knowledge of the harm that bullying causes and the range of types of bullying. They say that bullying does happen, but that staff sort it out. This contributes to their sense of being safe in school. They trust staff to help them when they need it. Older pupils are able to link their learning about bullying to discrimination in wider society.
• Pupils develop an open and tolerant approach to others who come from different backgrounds to their own, including those with different religious beliefs, cultural traditions or who come from different family backgrounds. However, pupils’ learning about healthy, personal relationships is not developed systematically as they move through the school.
• Careers guidance is provided for pupils from Year 9 onwards. They are helped to make important decisions about their future study and eventual employment by learning about different courses, academic or vocational, and about other providers, such as local colleges.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils requires improvement. Some pupils engage in behaviours that interrupt the learning of others, particularly if they do not feel engaged by the activities set for them.
• Pupils who are removed from lessons temporarily take some time and encouragement to be able to manage themselves well again.
• The school’s current overall rate of absence is slightly above the national average. Despite the school’s focus on good attendance, a small number of pupils do not attend well enough. They are persistently absent and the steps in the school’s current attendance strategy has not led to improvement at this stage. A large proportion of pupils who do not attend well, or who have sanctions for poor behaviour, are from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Most pupils are polite and have positive relationships with their peers and staff. This contributes to the generally pleasant atmosphere witnessed at breaks and lunchtimes.

Outcomes for pupils Requires improvement

• Typically, pupils enter the school with standards of attainment which are below the national average. Progress, as seen in the assessments at the end of key stage 4 in summer 2018, declined sharply against previous years, where it had been broadly average.
• Disadvantaged pupils, the most able and pupils with SEND in 2018 made less progress at the end of key stage 4 than that seen nationally. This included weak progress in English, mathematics and science. Progress rates across the wider curriculum were very variable. In most subjects, progress was weak.
• Leaders are clear that progress is ‘not where it should be’. The new assessment framework is enabling them to direct support accurately to improve pupils’ learning. As a result, leaders are able to strengthen pupils’ progress before they reach Year 11.
• The emerging signs of improvement show that the differences between current standards and the school’s ambitious targets for pupils are beginning to diminish.
• The stronger progress seen in some pupils’ books is not consistently seen in other books in the same subject. Progress is beginning to strengthen but remains fragile at the time of inspection. The examples of strong teaching and learning are not being harnessed systematically to improve pupils’ learning overall. Inconsistency in the quality of learning and pupils’ progress in science is particularly wide.
• Progress in mathematics is stronger than in English. At this stage, the introduction of the new curriculum and assessment framework has had a greater positive impact on pupils’ learning and progress in mathematics. While there are signs of improvement in examples of work in English, it is not yet strong enough to reflect good progress.
• Weaknesses in pupils’ use of basic literacy skills, for example in reading, limit their progress across the curriculum. Although staff support pupils’ acquisition of subject-specific vocabulary, pupils’ wider comprehension can be limited by gaps in literacy.
• The progress made by pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds reflects the same levels of inconsistency as seen for other pupils. There are stronger signs of improvement in some subjects and evidence of effective learning in examples of work seen, for example in French, food technology and mathematics. However, across a wider range of subjects, progress remains too inconsistent.
• The progress made by pupils with SEND is variable. It reflects the variability in the quality of teaching and learning across and within subjects. Where staff plan learning with precision and teaching assistants are deployed well, progress is stronger.

16 to 19 study programmes Requires improvement

• Outcomes for students in the sixth form are not consistently good. Over time, students make progress broadly in line with national averages. This remains the case for current students in academic and vocational routes. Aspects of vocational learning in 2018 showed that progress was below average.
• The proportion of students who continued their courses from Year 12 into Year 13 was well below the national average in 2017. The retention figure for 2018 improved but remained below the national average.
• Study programmes do not ensure that all students access meaningful workplace experience. Students who do not complete work experience placements do not have a high-quality alternative experience to complement their broader learning at school about the world of work.
• Recent changes to the timetable have diminished, at least temporarily, the scope for students to explore wider personal development as part of their programme of study. Students are keen to have further opportunities to discuss and deepen their understanding of a range of issues that help prepare them well for life in modern Britain, especially around heathy lifestyles and other cultures.
• The overall impact of teaching enables students to make progress broadly in line with the progress of other students nationally from similar starting points. In some aspects, students from disadvantaged backgrounds make better progress than others.
• Staff establish positive relationships with students. Students report that they feel safe and are cared for well by staff. They say they can trust staff to help them. Leaders ensure that the same rigorous arrangements to keep pupils safe in the main school apply to students in the sixth form.
• Leaders ensure that all programmes are delivered at level 3, and thus represent progression from the main school. Currently, there are no students who are following level 2 courses in mathematics or English.
• Wider aspects of the curriculum ensure that all students have personalised opportunities to consider their next steps, including meeting their aspirations to apply for places in high-quality higher education. The proportion of students leaving the school to take up study places in higher education was above the national average.
• All students benefit from well-considered careers advice and guidance at school. This helps them make informed choices about their next steps in education, training or employment.
• The proportion of former students who were not in education or training in 2017 and 2018 after leaving school was below the national average.
• Students behave well and treat others considerately. They take pride in the learning. Overall, students attend well. Attendance at the second site, in Spilsby, is currently not as strong as that found on the main site of the school.

School details

Unique reference number 135294 Local authority North East Lincolnshire Inspection number 10059174 This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005. Type of school Secondary comprehensive School category Age range of pupils Gender of pupils Gender of pupils in 16 to 19 study programmes Number of pupils on the school roll Of which, number on roll in 16 to 19 study programmes Academy sponsor-led 11 to 18 Mixed Mixed 971 67 Appropriate authority Board of trustees Chair Principal Telephone number Website Email address David Ross Wendy Jackson 01472 602000 www.havelockacademy.co.uk/ jburgess@havelockacademy.co.uk Date of previous inspection May 2015

Information about this school

• Havelock Academy is sponsored by the David Ross Education Trust.
• The academy is an average-sized secondary school and has a sixth form over two sites.
• The proportion of disadvantaged students is well above average.
• Most students are White British. The vast majority of students speak English as their first language.
• The proportion of pupils with SEND is well above average.
• There are a very few students educated full time at off-site provision.
• There are two off-site providers used by the academy. They are Seven Hills and Phoenix House.
• The academy holds the Artsmark Platinum award.
• There have been significant changes to staffing since the previous inspection.
• The role of the local governing body has changed recently. The former local governing body now focuses its work through the newly formed academy scrutiny committee. The wider range of governance duties are fulfilled through the trust’s board and centrally employed staff.

Information about this inspection

• Meetings were held with the acting principal, senior leaders, those responsible for governance of the school, middle leaders, non-teaching staff and teachers at various career points.
• Meetings were held with the chief executive officer and other members of the trust.
• Inspectors talked with groups of pupils, both in meetings and informally around the site, including at breaktime and lunchtime.
• A range of pupils’ work was scrutinised. This sample included the work of pupils of different abilities and year groups. Inspectors listened to pupils read.
• Telephone discussions were held with an alternative education provider.
• Inspectors observed teaching and learning in each key stage across a range of subjects.
• Inspectors took into account the responses to Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View, and the views expressed to them during telephone calls or during informal meetings at the beginning or end of the school day.
• Inspectors took into account responses from staff to Ofsted’s staff surveys.
• Inspectors considered a number of documents. These included the school’s self-evaluation and improvement plans, records of the monitoring of the quality of teaching and other quality assurance records, and minutes of governors’ meetings. Inspectors scrutinised the school’s arrangements to safeguard pupils.

Inspection team

Chris Campbell, lead inspector Tim Johnson Michael Cook Natasha Greenough

Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector