Spring Grove Primary School

Spring Grove Primary School Star Road, Isleworth, TW7 4HB

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Overall effectiveness

Previous inspection: Good 2 This inspection: Outstanding 1 Achievement of pupils Outstanding 1 Quality of teaching Outstanding 1 Behaviour and safety of pupils Outstanding 1 Leadership and management Outstanding 1

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is an outstanding school.  The headteacher has made sure that all staff, pupils and their parents and carers share her remarkable ambition and drive to improve the educational standards and provision at the school.  Teaching is consistently good and much is outstanding.  Standards have risen rapidly in the last three years, so that by the end of Key Stage 2, pupils’ attainment in reading, mathematics and more recently writing, is above average and continuing to improve. Pupils’ speaking and listening skills are outstanding.  Pupils who join the school speaking little or no English develop confidence and rapidly acquire language and communication skills that enable them to catch up quickly and to make as much progress as the others.  The school is committed to encouraging pupils and their families to learn together and, alongside the successful promotion of homework, this contributes significantly to the rise in academic achievement.

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

 The school is welcoming, caring and supportive of pupils from all backgrounds. Pupils’ relationships with one another as well as other adults are outstanding.  Pupils’ behaviour is exemplary. Pupils are eager to learn and they are unreservedly polite and courteous to one another.  Pupils feel very safe and cared for. They relish taking responsibility for particular areas of school life such as keeping the playground safe or being a school councillor.  Excellent personal, spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is at the heart of the school’s success and underpins all of the school’s strengths.  The wide variety of themes and activities provided by the school ensures that pupils develop skills in a broad range of subjects and they are well prepared for their next stage of education.  Educational provision and teaching in the Early Years Foundation Stage are outstanding.  Support staff, who work with pupils in need of

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

extra help, are making a strong contribution to rising standards.  The governing body holds the school robustly to account for its performance and its management of the finances.

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Information about this inspection

 Inspectors observed 18 lessons, three of which were joint observations carried out with the headteacher and the deputy headteacher. Inspectors also carried out a series of short visits to other lessons across the school, observed an assembly and listened to children read.  Meetings were held with staff, pupils, the Vice Chair of the Governing Body and other members, and a representative from the local authority. Inspectors took account of the 72 responses to the online Parent View questionnaire as well as the views of parents and carers they met.  Inspectors scrutinised a range of documentation, including national test results and the school’s own information about pupils’ achievement, the school’s self-evaluation, improvement plans, safeguarding policies and records and documents relating to performance management.

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Inspection team

Lesley Leak, Lead inspector Additional inspector Christopher Crouch Additional inspector Howard Dodd Additional inspector

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Information about this school

 This is an average-sized primary school.  Just under 20% of pupils are known to be eligible for the pupil premium (additional funding for pupils known to be eligible for free school meals or who are looked after by the local authority). This proportion is smaller than the national average.  The majority of pupils attending this school are from ethnic minority groups and speak English as an additional language. Thirty four per cent of pupils at the school do not speak English before they come to school. Many of these are in the Early Years Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1.  The proportion of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs supported through school action is about 10%. Just over 11% of pupils are supported at school action plus or have a statement of special educational needs. These proportions are high compared to national averages.  The school meets the current government’s floor standards, which set the minimum expectations

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Make sure that pupils are consistently given opportunities to respond to their teachers’ marking and feedback.

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The achievement of pupils is outstanding

 Many children enter the school with below age-related expectations, often speaking little or no English. As a result of outstanding teaching, pupils make good progress from their starting points. Pupils’ achievement is strong throughout the school and exceptionally rapid in Years 2 and 6. As a result, by the time they leave, they have reached above average standards in English and mathematics.  Pupils’ progress in reading and mathematics is outstanding in relation to pupils’ starting points and pupils’ writing, though it lagged a little behind at one time, is now improving rapidly as a result of the school’s policy to raise the attainment of boys in writing. All pupils’ writing is benefiting from increased opportunities to write at length in different contexts and subjects.  Pupils’ speaking and listening skills are outstanding and continually developed through well- planned opportunities to discuss and explore their ideas. For example, in a Year 5 topic lesson

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The achievement of pupils is outstanding

about bread making, pupils were invited to describe to their classmates how bread is made and were reminded to use ’bossy’ verbs in their explanations. Pupils are eager to come forward and their developing confidence with public speaking is evident.  All groups of pupils make rapid progress relative to their individual starting points.  Disabled pupils and those with special educational needs make good progress as a result of the school’s carefully planned and well-delivered additional help and support.  Pupils who join the school speaking little or no English are provided with extremely good support, which enables them to develop confidence and to acquire language and communication skills rapidly. This enables them to catch up quickly and to make as much progress as the others.  Pupils eligible for support under the pupil premium initiative are making more progress in English and mathematics when compared with similar pupils nationally. This is because funding has

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The achievement of pupils is outstanding

been properly spent on meeting the needs of identified pupils through additional support and other small-group activities in English and mathematics.  The attainment of higher attaining pupils is significantly better than it was previously and the overall profile is well above average. This is reflected in the increasing proportions reaching higher National Curriculum levels.

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

 Parents and carers, pupils and inspectors agree that outstanding achievement is the result of consistently good and frequently outstanding teaching.  Teachers create a calm, welcoming and extremely positive learning environment which fosters good relationships and promotes high expectations of pupils’ behaviour and achievement. Teachers have very good relationships with pupils and know their classes well.  In the Early Years Foundation Stage, where the teaching is exceptional, routines are well established and learning activities are carefully organised. Staff provide a stimulating learning environment where children quickly become confident and eager learners. The teaching of phonics is having a strong impact on pupils’ early reading and love of books.  Teachers use high-quality resources, including information and communication technology (ICT), to engage the interest of pupils for long periods of time. Staff are generally highly skilled

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

at enabling pupils to work independently and initiate their own ideas. In one Year 3 ICT lesson, pupils were excited about creating their own page for ‘Fronter’, the school’s virtual learning environment site, relishing the chance to work creatively on their own. In another highly effective lesson, Year 6 pupils collaborated enthusiastically in pairs to compose an expressive phrase of digitised music.  The school’s highly effective actions to raise pupils’ achievement in writing ensure that teachers systematically set out clear objectives and steps for success. Pupils are encouraged to write at length across a range of subjects and explicitly taught how to improve their use of grammar, spelling and punctuation. Material is well chosen to catch the attention of boys as well as girls. In one outstanding Year 5 lesson, pupils were enjoying describing imaginary heroes or heroines alongside mythical monsters for their own recreations of a Greek myth.

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

 Teaching caters very well for the higher attaining pupils by providing them with more challenging tasks both at home as well as in school. In Year 6, there is a strong emphasis on stretching the abilities of all pupils through small-group support at every level in literacy and mathematics, and as a result, they are already well prepared for the end of Key Stage 2 tests.  All pupils thrive on teachers’ challenging and open-ended questions which require them to work things out for themselves. In one particularly successful Year 4 science lesson, pupils were engaged in testing out the effect of household acids such as vinegar on eggshell, in order to predict the potential damage caused by acidic foods on teeth. Not only were pupils’ observations of a high order but their knowledge about dental care, arising from their homework task, was equally impressive.  Adults who support pupils in need of additional help, including pupils who have special

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

educational needs and for whom English is an additional language, are making a strong contribution to pupils’ good progress because their work is skilfully planned to match each individual’s needs.  Marking and assessment of pupils’ work are regular and consistently good in English but in mathematics, there is not always quite the same attention to detail. Although teachers frequently provide useful guidance about how pupils can improve their work, pupils do not always respond to this.

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The behaviour and safety of pupils are outstanding

 The behaviour in lessons and around school is outstanding. Inspectors completely agree with the pupil who said, ’There’s always a calm atmosphere; everyone’s ready to learn.’ Pupils and staff are unreservedly polite and courteous to one another and there is a strong community feeling to the school.  Pupils are eager to learn and are highly motivated. They demonstrate outstanding social skills, working well together in pairs or small groups. They respond well to teachers’ high expectations and seize opportunities to take responsibility for their own learning and consequently achieve well.  Pupils of all ages take responsibility for their own actions. They have a good understanding of how to stay safe. Bullying is extremely rare, as pupils fully recognise the importance of caring for each other and valuing each other’s views and opinions. Pupils’ understanding of the different kinds of bullying is secure, for example they are clear about internet bullying and its

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The behaviour and safety of pupils are outstanding

consequences. They are confident in the school’s ability deal with bullying swiftly.  Pupils value the many opportunities to take on, and in some cases train for, important roles and responsibilities such as lunchtime play leaders, school councillors and library helpers. Year 6 pupils also run a successful, ‘Start the day with a stretch’ club, designed to prepare Year 2 boys for learning. All of these activities make a valuable contribution to improving the school and everyone’s well-being.  All staff are skilled and highly consistent in their approaches to behaviour, which contributes to the pupils’ strong academic achievement. Pupils enjoy ‘appreciation assemblies’ where their academic achievements and other important contributions to school life are rewarded and celebrated.  Pupils are happy at school and as a result their attendance is now average and improving.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 In the words of a parent or carer, ‘The school enables the children to shine and develop their potential.’ The longstanding headteacher has justifiably earned the trust and respect of the school community by providing very strong leadership that has empowered staff as well as pupils to develop their talents. Ably supported by the deputy headteacher, both senior leaders are highly ambitious, professional and uncompromising in their drive for pupils to do as well as they can.  Central to the school’s outstanding improvement over the last three years is the robustness of the school’s view of its own strengths and weaknesses, the investment in the accurate tracking of pupils’ achievement and the high-quality training and professional development for staff.  Systems for managing the performance of staff are rigorous and robustly linked to the monitoring of teaching quality and pupils’ progress.  The curriculum provides a wide range of opportunities for high-quality learning and meets the

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The leadership and management are outstanding

needs, abilities and interests of pupils. It is very successfully broadened by a wide variety of enrichment activities, including French classes, residential trips and other exciting clubs and visits. English, mathematics, science and ICT are taught as discrete subjects and pupils who require extra support to catch up on their studies attend after-school ‘booster’ sessions.  The development of pupils’ social, moral, spiritual and cultural development is highly successful and embedded in the curriculum and the everyday life of the school. Social and cultural development is strong. Pupils celebrate the diversity of their backgrounds and take pride in their effective friendships and relationships. They thrive under the different artistic, scientific and cultural opportunities offered to them and demonstrate a positive and confident approach to life which results from having high self-esteem.  The school is extremely successful in engaging parents and carers with how to help their

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The leadership and management are outstanding

children at home. Parents and carers comment on how successfully the school promotes homework and praise the guidance they receive about helping their children with independent study and research tasks at home.  The school has continually worked in a very positive way with the advisory service at Hounslow local authority and has always welcomed the high-quality expertise and support it receives, when requested.  The governance of the school:  The work of the governing body has contributed to the outstanding quality of education the school provides. The governing body knows how the school performs against national standards and pays close attention to the school’s assessment and pupil performance information. Governors know how the pupil premium funding is allocated and are rightly proud that the achievement gap is narrowing. They have had relevant training about keeping the school under review and are very clear about what the school is doing well and where it could

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The leadership and management are outstanding

do better. They hold senior leaders to account for their performance and have developed close links with parents and carers. Governors manage the resources of the school very effectively and ensure that the performance management system for staff is robust and linked closely to pay, for teachers and senior leaders. The governing body fulfils its statutory responsibilities and ensures that all requirements are met and effective in relation to the safeguarding of children.

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Grade Judgement Description

Grade 1 Outstanding An outstanding school is highly effective in delivering outcomes that provide exceptionally well for all its pupils’ needs. This ensures that pupils are very well equipped for the next stage of their education, training or employment. Grade 2 Good A good school is effective in delivering outcomes that provide well for all its pupils’ needs. Pupils are well prepared for the next stage of their education, training or employment. Grade 3 Requires improvement A school that requires improvement is not yet a good school, but it is not inadequate. This school will receive a full inspection within 24 months from the date of this inspection. Grade 4 Inadequate A school that has serious weaknesses is inadequate overall and requires significant improvement but leadership and management are judged to be Grade 3 or better. This school will receive regular monitoring by Ofsted inspectors. A school that requires special measures is one where the school is

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Grade Judgement Description

failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education and the school’s leaders, managers or governors have not demonstrated that they have the capacity to secure the necessary improvement in the school. This school will receive regular monitoring by Ofsted inspectors.

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School details

Unique reference number 102500 Local authority Hounslow Inspection number 402889

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School details

This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005.

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School details

Type of school Primary School category Community Age range of pupils 3–11 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 296 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Elaine Moreton Headteacher Maureen Buckby Date of previous school inspection 14 July 2008 Telephone number 020 8560 0965 Fax number 020 8758 1449 Email address head@springgrove.hounslow.sch.uk guidance ‘raising concerns and making complaints about Ofsted', which is available from Ofsted’s website: www.ofsted.gov.uk . If you would like Ofsted to send you a copy of the guidance, please telephone 0300 123 4234 , or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk .

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School details

You can use Parent View to give Ofsted your opinion on your child’s school. Ofsted will use the information parents and carers provide when deciding which schools to inspect and when and as part of the inspection.

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School details

You can also use Parent View to find out what other parents and carers think about schools in England. You can visit www.parentview.ofsted.gov.uk, or look for the link on the main Ofsted website: www.ofsted.gov.uk

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School details

achieve excellence in the care of children and young people, and in education and skills for learners of all ages. It regulates and inspects childcare and children's social care, and inspects the Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service (Cafcass), schools, colleges, initial teacher training, work- based learning and skills training, adult and community learning, and education and training in prisons and other secure establishments. It assesses council children’s services, and inspects services for looked after children, safeguarding and child protection. Further copies of this report are obtainable from the school. Under the Education Act 2005, the school must provide a copy of this report free of charge to certain categories of people. A charge not exceeding the full cost of reproduction may be made for any other copies supplied. If you would like a copy of this document in a different format, such as large print or Braille, please

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School details

telephone 0300 123 4234, or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk . You may copy all or parts of this document for non-commercial educational purposes, as long as you give details of the source and date of publication and do not alter the information in any way. To receive regular email alerts about new publications, including survey reports and school inspection reports, please visit our website and go to ‘Subscribe’.

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School details

T: 0300 123 4234 Textphone: 0161 618 8524 E: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk W: www.ofsted.gov.uk

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