Setting

Penny Pepper Eversley Primary School Crest Avenue Pitsea Basildon SS13 2EF

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School

Following my visit to your school on 4 February 2014, I write on behalf of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills to report the findings. Thank you for the help you gave me and for the time you made available to discuss the actions you are taking to improve the school since the most recent section 5 inspection.

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School

The visit was the first monitoring inspection since the school was judged to require improvement following the section 5 inspection in October 2013. It was carried out under section 8 of the Education Act 2005.

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School

Senior leaders and governors are not taking effective action to tackle the areas requiring improvement identified at the last section 5 inspection and plans are not sharply focused on rapidly bringing about improvement. The school should take immediate action to:

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School

 review the school’s improvement plans to ensure they address the areas for improvement thoroughly and clearly  ensure the school’s improvement plans include measureable targets so that governors and others can monitor the school’s progress and challenge leaders rigorously  improve the school’s monitoring procedures to ensure that leaders have a full and accurate evaluation of teaching over time.

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Evidence

Serco Inspections Colmore Plaza 20 Colmore Circus Queensway Birmingham B4 6AT T 0300 123 1231 Text Phone: 0161 6188524 enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk www.ofsted.gov.uk Direct T : 0121 6799169 Direct email : mathew.mitchell@serco.com During the visit, I met with you and we toured the classrooms together. I met with other school leaders, members of the governing body, and a representative from the local authority. I looked at documents including the school’s improvement plans, achievement data and records of your monitoring activities.

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Main findings

School leaders are determined to improve matters. Governors have received training to help them understand school achievement data and use it to ask probing questions. Some governors have recently visited a good example of governance to help improve their procedures. The school’s improvement plans do not help governors and others monitor the school’s progress however, because there are not enough measureable targets and it is not immediately clear how each area for improvement is going to be addressed.

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Main findings

Teachers receive training and support to help them improve but this has yet to impact on the quality of teaching. The school’s focus on improving handwriting and the presentation of pupils’ work is beginning to have an impact in some classes. Teachers’ marking comments do not yet consistently help pupils know how to improve their work. The quality of phonics teaching in small groups, varies between the adults who teach the sounds letters make.

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Main findings

The headteacher makes accurate evaluations of teaching and can provide useful feedback to help teachers improve. However, the monitoring of teaching is not rigorous because targets that teachers have for improvement are not followed up quickly enough to check that matters have improved. Leaders do not evaluate the progress pupils make in their books well enough and this evidence is not compared with progress data and evaluations of teaching in lessons to give a clear view of teaching over time.

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Main findings

Leaders track pupils’ progress. Regular meetings are held to hold to teachers to account when pupils do not make the expected progress. However, the accuracy of teachers’ assessments are not fully checked by school leaders. Leaders’ expectations of pupils’ progress are not always clear enough.

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Main findings

Ofsted may carry out further visits and, where necessary, provide further support and challenge to the school until its next section 5 inspection.

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External support

The local authority did not act quickly enough to identify the school’s weaknesses before the section 5 inspection. A local authority representative now visits the school and is providing support and monitoring the school’s progress. He has identified weaknesses in the school’s improvement plans and aims to support leaders to address these weaknesses. I am copying this letter to the Chair of the Governing Body, the Director of Children’s Services for insert local authority name and as below.

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