Setting

Mr K Todd Headteacher Greenway Academy Greenway Horsham RH12 2JS

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Requires improvement: monitoring inspection visit to Greenway Academy

Following my visit to your academy on 28 March 2014, I write on behalf of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills to report the findings of my visit. 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 academy since the most recent section 5 inspection.

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Requires improvement: monitoring inspection visit to Greenway Academy

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

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Requires improvement: monitoring inspection visit to Greenway Academy

Senior leaders and governors are now taking effective action to tackle the areas requiring improvement identified at the last section 5. The academy should take further action to:

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Requires improvement: monitoring inspection visit to Greenway Academy

 plan for staff to learn from seeing good and outstanding practice in other schools  organise the transition to the new system to monitor pupil achievement so as to capture all of the good ideas and advantages obtained from having made the current one work so successfully.

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Evidence

During the visit I met with you and with your two assistant headteachers, and with the Chair of the Governing Body and five other governors, to discuss the actions taken since my previous visit on 14 October 2013, and my meeting with the full governing body on 6 November 2014. Tribal 1-4 Portland Square Bristol BS2 8RR T 0300 123 1231 Text Phone: 0161 6188524 enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk www.ofsted.gov.uk Direct T 0117 311 5359 Direct F 0117 315 0430 Email : christina.bannerman@tribalgroup.com

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Main findings

The academy has made appropriately rapid and positive responses to the concerns I raised at my first visit. I am pleased that you found that the Getting to Good seminar you subsequently attended reinforced and clarified many of the issues we had discussed. Your adoption of a new school improvement framework has been successful: it has stimulated a great deal of reflection in the academy and you are using it well to support your drive to improve achievement. Importantly, it has also enabled you and governors to re-establish and strengthen the values of the academy, and so to bring about changes in a way that everyone can understand and respect.

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Main findings

You have strengthened your links with your local schools network and made new links with a number of other schools, including a local outstanding secondary school. You and other senior staff having visiting some of them to see good and outstanding practice has been very useful; already several ideas from these visits have been implemented successfully. Teaching staff have not had the opportunity to undertake such visits yet but I agree with your view that this is best done in a way that closely supports their individual training needs, and that this will therefore take careful planning. It is also good to see more work underway with local infant schools to pinpoint how pupils’ progress can be supported best when they arrive at the academy.

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Main findings

Good work has been undertaken to improve standards of reading throughout the academy. Your development of the phonics (linking letters to the sounds they make) provision is beginning to make a difference, and support for individual pupils is now well planned and better focused on their needs over shorter time intervals.

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Main findings

Systems to monitor pupils’ progress are now being used very well, although there is a need to switch to a new system for reasons beyond your control. Governors now have a much better grasp of achievement in all year groups and are quite rightly focusing on the progress of specific groups, including pupils eligible for the pupil premium, so as to be able to offer you and your senior staff high levels of challenge and support. They also have a much clearer understanding of the quality of teaching, placing lesson observation judgements alongside progress measures for the first time.

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Main findings

Perhaps most importantly, there is now a sense of excitement and passion evident in the work of the academy. You, your senior staff and governors now speak with conviction about improving teaching by concentrating on the quality of pupils’ learning, and about being open to new ideas and constructively self-critical. You already have well-considered plans to embed the early gains from the use of the school improvement framework you have adopted.

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External support

The local authority provided good support with the review of governance although there has been no further contact between you since. Your improvement partner, an experienced headteacher, continues to work with you closely and effectively. The training and challenge visits from the school improvement company you are working with, and the links you have developed with several other schools locally, are clearly beneficial.

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External support

Ofsted will carry out further visits and, where necessary, provide further support and challenge to the academy until its next section 5 inspection. We agreed that I would visit again early in the autumn term 2014 to gauge the academy’s progress and to review the timing of the next inspection.

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External support

I am copying this letter to the Chair of the Governing Body, the Director of Children’s Services for West Sussex and the Academies Advisers Unit at the Department for Education.

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