Wavell Community Junior School Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Improve the effectiveness of leadership and management at all levels by:
  • securing consistently good or better teaching and learning across year groups and subjects
  • sharpening improvement plans, including the correct detail and information needed to bring about better outcomes for pupils
  • evaluating the effectiveness of leaders’ actions, regularly and rigorously to determine the extent of success and to inform next steps
  • developing effective systems to monitor, evaluate and address issues of attendance and behaviour
  • offering subject and middle leaders the support, training and opportunities needed to bring about rapid improvement in their areas of responsibility
  • embedding the new assessment system to inform strategic direction and to support staff more effectively in their planning for pupils’ learning
  • affording staff regular opportunities to share and learn from the good practice that exists, particularly in Year 6.
• Secure improvements in the quality of teaching and learning by:
  • using assessment information judiciously to plan learning and tasks that accurately meet the needs of pupils in reading, writing and mathematics
  • ensuring that pupils read regularly with adults and have frequent opportunities to write at length
  • managing pupils’ behaviour effectively, promoting positive attitudes to learning and eliminating low-level disruption
  • providing pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities with the support and challenge needed to make consistently good progress, particularly in writing. An external review of governance is recommended in order to assess how this aspect of leadership and management can be improved.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management

Requires improvement

• There have been significant changes in staffing since the previous inspection. This academic year alone sees 50% of teachers new to the school. As a result, those responsible for managing particular subjects and areas of learning have altered frequently. The monitoring and evaluation of teaching, learning and assessment has therefore lacked continuity and rigour over time. This has been a contributory factor in hindering the pace of improvement.
• New and recently appointed senior and middle leaders demonstrate a good deal of knowledge, skill and expertise in their particular areas of responsibility. They have not yet had sufficient time or the training and opportunities needed to make a notable contribution to school improvement.
• Since the previous inspection, the work of senior leaders and governors has not brought about consistency in the quality of teaching, learning and assessment. Leaders do not evaluate their actions meticulously or with ample frequency to check if they are making a positive difference. Consequently, pupils’ progress and attainment over time is too variable, particularly in reading, writing and mathematics.
• Leaders’ improvement planning does not focus sufficiently on the right priorities. There is not enough emphasis on improving the quality of teaching and learning or pupils’ outcomes. Good practices that currently exist, particularly across Year 6, are not routinely shared to support staff development. The overarching, whole-school plan, as well as individual subject action plans, lack essential detail and information. Leaders’ actions, therefore, are not reliably fruitful.
• Senior leaders cannot confidently explain their approach to managing pupils’ behaviour or attendance. Records are not analysed carefully to determine barriers, patterns or trends. This means that leaders do not tackle the underlying causes of low-level disruption effectively and pupils’ overall attendance remains low compared to the national average.
• The leadership team have introduced a new assessment system. Leaders now have access to more accurate and reliable information about pupils’ progress and attainment in mathematics, reading, writing, English grammar, spelling and punctuation. It is too soon to tell if leaders, governors and staff can use this information to secure improved outcomes for pupils across subjects and year groups successfully.
• Governors and senior leaders have used additional funding for pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities with consideration for pupils’ needs and with deliberate intent. Extra resources and staff have been put in place to support and challenge individuals in their work and learning. Leaders do not, however, have robust systems in place to gauge the effectiveness of these measures. Despite leaders’ efforts, pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities do not make consistently good progress, particularly in writing.
• The headteacher is committed to ensuring that pupils access their full statutory entitlement to subjects across the curriculum. A rich variety of trips, visits and visitors enrich pupils’ experiences. Pupils are enthused by art, science, educational visits and the wide range of after-school clubs; cross-country running, cookery, dance and hockey were cited as particular favourites. Nevertheless, leaders’ tracking and assessment of pupils’ progress and attainment across the wider curriculum is not well-embedded. This means that leaders cannot be certain that pupils are making good progress from their different starting points in each area of study and learning.
• Leaders target the service premium funding carefully to foster pupils’ personal, social and emotional needs. Leaders have a compassionate understanding of the benefits and potential issues that pupils and families from a service background may experience. For example, support for pupils who experience frequent house moves and changes of school is effective. Due to leaders’ actions, pupils feel welcome, settle quickly and soon feel part of the school community. Leaders’ use of this additional funding to ensure that pupils make rapid academic progress from their starting points in mathematics, reading and writing, is less well established and evaluated.
• Leaders use the primary sport funding wisely. Pupils enjoy a wide range of sporting activities and competitive challenges. All pupils are supported to develop a sound understanding of the benefits of an active, healthy lifestyle.
• Leaders have successfully established a warm and embracing ethos at Wavell. Parents told inspectors their children are ‘happy to come to school’ and quickly ‘make lots of friends’. Pupils say they feel welcome and ‘everyone helps’ if they are new to school mid-term.

Governance of the school

• Governors bring a broad set of skills, knowledge and experience to bear on their work. They align themselves to particular subjects, year groups and/or areas of the school’s work in an effort to understand fully the effect of leaders’ actions. In this way, governors strive to ensure that they make best use of their various capabilities and expertise.
• Governors make frequent visits to school. They meet with staff, talk with pupils and take part in school events to experience for themselves what it feels like to be a pupil here. Governors’ findings and reflections are not well documented, however, which lessens their ability to identify strengths and weaknesses in performance.
• Since the previous inspection, governors have worked diligently to improve the degree of challenge that they present to leaders. They ask more testing questions in meetings. Nonetheless, governors fall short of getting to the heart of matters of concern because they fail to delve more deeply into leaders’ responses.
• Governors have recently put plans in place to monitor the well-being of staff and to capture staff views and opinions of leaders’ work and the school’s performance. Governors understand their role in considering teachers’ workload. It is too early to determine the effectiveness of governors’ work in this area.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.
• Leaders and governors take their responsibilities for the protection and care of pupils seriously. Appropriately stringent checks are carried out to ensure that adults working with pupils are suitable to do so.
• Safe entry and exit systems are in place. The site is attractive and well maintained meaning hazards and potential risks to pupils and staff are minimised.
• Leaders work with a wide range of external agencies and experts to secure the correct support for vulnerable pupils. Health partners, educational psychologists and speech and language therapists are among those partners working with the school to meet the needs of families. Most records are well-maintained with a clear chronology and suitable details.
• The large majority of parents and pupils feel that pupils are safe and happy in Wavell Juniors. The buddy system supports those pupils who are new to school effectively, making them feel welcome and supported. Most pupils are confident that they have peers and adults in school with whom they could share any concerns they might have.
• Leaders’ records detailing matters of child protection and safeguarding show that staff training takes place regularly. Training is based on the most recent guidance and information such as the government’s ‘Prevent’ duty and the Department for Education’s ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ (2016). Leaders’ checks to ensure that staff fully understand all elements of their training are less well documented.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Requires improvement

• While there are some recent signs of improvement, teaching, learning and assessment are not consistently good across subjects and year groups. Over time, this has resulted in unreliable rates of progress and low attainment for too many pupils, particularly in reading, writing and mathematics.
• Work in pupils’ books and lessons as well as the school’s most recent assessment information demonstrates signs of improvement in teaching and learning particularly across Year 6. There are plans in place to allow staff to learn and share from the good practices that exist although this is not yet operational.
• Teachers do not use assessment information effectively to plan learning and tasks that closely match pupils’ needs. In reading, writing and mathematics some pupils practise things they already know and can do while others have too little support to manage tasks successfully. Teachers do not reliably challenge or support pupils appropriately. Too often, this results in pupils switching off and engaging in low-level disruption. In turn, this interrupts teaching and learning.
• Teachers do not read frequently enough with pupils. While a small proportion of pupils have daily reading sessions, others read too infrequently. This inhibits pupils’ opportunities to enrich their vocabulary, develop fluency and enter into rich discussions about books and language with teachers fulfilling the role of ‘expert’. Pupils’ skills of inference, deduction and comprehension and their ability to evaluate the quality and content of texts are hindered. Pupils’ progress, thereby, falters.
• Pupils do not have regular opportunities to write at length. Teachers, therefore, do not have a clear picture of pupils’ progress and capabilities as writers. This lessens the effectiveness of teachers’ challenge and support for individuals and groups. As a result, the quality of pupils’ composition, handwriting and presentation is hampered over time. Pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities, in particular, make inconsistent progress in writing.
• Some staff make the intended learning purposeful and clear to pupils. They model, demonstrate and explain precisely and succinctly any new learning or unfamiliar concepts, making clear the links between past and future learning. On these occasions, learning is purposeful and meaningful for pupils. This is not yet a consistent feature of practice across year groups.
• Some staff demonstrate strengths in their own subject knowledge across the curriculum. These adults use questioning skilfully to encourage pupils to think more deeply about their learning and to find out the extent of pupils’ existing knowledge and understanding. They address pupils’ misconceptions promptly. Again, however, such good practice is not consistent.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Requires improvement

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare requires improvement.
• Although leaders have put systems in place to support pupils to better understand how to be a successful learner, these are not yet having the intended effect. Pupils cannot talk confidently about their strengths or things that they need to work on. Staff do not support pupils effectively to understand which behaviours and attitudes will equip them well for later learning or life. Pupils’ attitudes to learning, therefore, are not consistently positive and their awareness of what successful learning looks like is not well established.
• A small proportion of pupils expressed concerns about their physical and emotional well-being during breaktimes. Describing some behaviour as ‘rough’, some pupils were worried about being knocked over, albeit accidently, by others. Leaders have not analysed behaviour logs meticulously in order to identify and successfully eliminate the small number of overly boisterous play instances.
• Compared to national averages, a high proportion of pupils move to and from the school throughout the year. Leaders and staff strive diligently to make pupils who are new to school welcome and part of the school community. As a result of their efforts, pupils settle quickly. They make good use of the buddy system to form positive friendships with their tolerant and kind-hearted peers.
• Pupils can discuss the school’s work to keep them safe. They are developing a suitable understanding of the risks and benefits of information technology and social media. Pupils appreciate the filters and guidance that are in place to support and direct them.
• Pupils have developed a tolerant and respectful view of others. They are interested in the ideas and opinions of others. Pupils thoroughly enjoy engaging in good-natured debate and discussion about weighty matters that affect their own or others’ daily lives.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils requires improvement. Low-level disruption interrupts teaching and inhibits the pace of learning too frequently. Not all teachers manage transitions without losing pupils’ attention and subsequently valuable learning time is lost. Similarly not all staff identify the reasons behind pupils’ inattention in order to address issues promptly and manage pupils’ behaviour effectively.
• Pupils’ attendance is variable over time. In 2017, overall attendance figures were below average compared to national averages. The proportion of pupils regularly absent from school was higher than other schools nationally. Leaders do not scrutinise attendance information carefully enough to address issues of poor attendance. Leaders’ and governors’ work to support pupils and families to understand the importance of good attendance is not yet well embedded.
• Pupils often demonstrate a sensible and mature set of manners. They are extremely polite to visitors, for example, holding doors open without prompting and wishing visitors a good day. There are wide smiles and friendly comments aplenty. At times, though, pupils’ overly energetic conduct in and around school puts others at risk of being bumped into or knocked over.
• Teachers and pupils across the school have a warm rapport. Staff have professional, and caring attitudes to pupils and for the most part, pupils are respectful of adults. Pupils described teachers as ‘kind’ and ‘nice’, saying to inspectors that staff ‘help if we have problems’. Pupils usually respond appropriately to requests and instructions from adults.

Outcomes for pupils Requires improvement

• Weaknesses in teaching, learning and assessment over time have resulted in pupils making variable progress across subjects. Outcomes require improvement because inconsistencies in the quality of teaching, learning and assessment remain. Current pupils do not make the progress from their different starting points that should be expected of them.
• Across year groups, too few pupils are currently working at or reaching the standards expected for their age. Rates of progress in reading, writing and mathematics, in particular, have been too slow to enable pupils to catch up with their peers nationally. The work in pupils’ books and current assessment information shows that there is too much variation in the rates of progress that pupils make from their different starting points.
• In 2016 and again in 2017, the proportion of pupils who reached the expected standard in each subject at the end of key stage 2 was smaller than the proportion found nationally. Consequently, not enough pupils are well prepared for the secondary curriculum.
• Pupils across year groups do not have enough opportunities to write at length. Pupils, therefore, cannot build upon their existing composition skills consistently or effectively. This hinders pupils’ abilities to develop the secure knowledge, skills and understanding needed to make rapid progress as a writer. Outcomes in writing remain too variable.
• Too many pupils read infrequently with adults in school. This inhibits their progress, and in turn their achievement, in reading. Weaknesses in such a central life skill also inhibit pupils’ rates of progress and outcomes in subjects across the wider curriculum. Many pupils read regularly with parents at home.
• Not all pupils across year groups who have SEN and/or disabilities make enough progress to catch up with their national peers from similar starting points. The school’s own assessment information as well as work in pupils’ books shows that current progress for pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities in writing is especially weak.
• Compared to national averages, a high proportion of pupils reached the expected standards in science by the end of key stage 2 in both 2016 and again in 2017. Pupils say they enjoy science and particularly like engaging in practical investigations. Current pupils’ books, however, show a more variable picture of progress across year groups. Despite the strong outcomes for Year 6 pupils in recent years, pupils’ outcomes in science overall require further scrutiny and development.
• Attainment by the end of key stage 2 over time has been low compared to other pupils nationally. There are, however, signs that recent improvements in teaching, learning and assessment are beginning to make a positive difference for pupils. Current Year 6 pupils are making more rapid progress across subjects due to strengths in practice across the cohort.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 121343 North Yorkshire 10042223 This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005. Type of school Junior School category Age range of pupils Gender of pupils Community 7 to 11 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 204 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Headteacher Telephone number Website Email address Linda Wilson Phillip Hunter 01748 832 298 www.wavell-jun.n-yorks.sch.uk headteacher@wavell-jun.n-yorks.sch.uk Date of previous inspection 4–5 June 2014

Information about this school

• There have been considerable changes in staffing since the previous inspection including a new headteacher, two new assistant headteachers, a new chair of governors and several new teachers.
• The school meets the government’s current floor standards, which set out the minimum expectations for pupils’ attainment and progress by the end of Year 6.
• This is an average-sized junior school.
• The proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals is lower than average. There are too few disadvantaged pupils to report upon.
• The school is located within the Catterick garrison. The large majority of pupils are from service families. This means a significant proportion of pupils are eligible for support through the government’s additional premium funding for service pupils.
• The proportion of pupils who start or leave the school at times other than the normal points of entry and exit for a junior school is much higher than usual. This is predominantly due to military postings.
• A much higher proportion of pupils than seen nationally receive support for their SEN and/or disabilities. The proportion of pupils who have statements or education, health and care plans for their SEN and/or disabilities is also higher than national averages.
• The proportion of pupils who speak English as an additional language is lower than other schools nationally.

Information about this inspection

• Inspectors observed teaching and learning on both days of the inspection. The headteacher and one assistant headteacher conducted joint observations with inspectors on day 1 of the inspection.
• Meetings were held with senior, middle and subject leaders, pupils, governors, including the chair of the governing body, and local authority partners from North Yorkshire local authority.
• A range of documentation was examined including the school’s self-evaluation, assessment information about pupils’ progress and attainment, monitoring records of the quality of teaching and learning, school improvement plans, subject action plans, governance, attendance, behaviour, school policies and information about the curriculum and safeguarding.
• Inspectors listened to pupils read, spoke with pupils formally and informally in lessons and outdoors and examined pupils’ work. The conduct and behaviour of pupils was observed in school and during breaktimes. There were no responses by pupils to Ofsted’s online questionnaire.
• Parents’ views were gathered from Ofsted’s online surveys; 18 parents responded via free-text and 20 via Parent View. Inspectors also spoke with parents face-to-face as pupils entered or left school.
• The responses of the 19 staff members to Ofsted’s questionnaire were also taken into account.

Inspection team

Fiona Manuel, lead inspector Donna Callaghan Karine Hendley

Her Majesty’s Inspector Ofsted Inspector Her Majesty’s Inspector