St Clement's Church of England Academy

St Clement's Church of England Academy Butlin Street, Birmingham, B7 5NS

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Overall effectiveness

Previous inspection: Not previously inspected This inspection: Good 2 Achievement of pupils Good 2 Quality of teaching Good 2 Behaviour and safety of pupils Outstanding 1 Leadership and management Good 2

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is a good school.  All groups of pupils achieve well. Pupils make good progress in reading, writing and mathematics, and from low starting points reach average standards by the end of Year 6.  Improvement in learning has been rapid since the school converted to an Academy eighteen months ago.  Teaching is consistently good throughout all years. Teachers have good relationships with their pupils and high expectations for their social and academic development.  The attitudes to learning and behaviour of the pupils are outstanding. They are enthusiastic, friendly, caring and thoughtful, and show great respect to adults and each other.  An experienced and inspirational Principal who leads from the front and demands only the best for the pupils leads the school very effectively.  All cultures mix happily together in a lively and colourful environment, and are provided with an excellent spiritual, moral, social and cultural

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

education.  The governing body has played a positive role since Academy conversion in the leadership and management of the school.  The sponsor of the school is playing an important and active role in working closely with leaders to provide high quality education for the pupils.

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It is not yet an outstanding school because

 Not enough teaching is outstanding in order to enable more pupils to make outstanding progress in their learning.  Although pupils develop their basic skills in literacy well, they do not have enough opportunities to use their numeracy skills across a wide range of subjects.  Teachers do not encourage pupils enough to develop confidence in their speaking skills when answering questions or speaking in front of others.

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Information about this inspection

 Inspectors observed 15 lessons. Four of these were seen jointly with the Principal or Vice- Principal.  Meetings were held with pupils, the Principal, the Vice-Principal, other staff with particular responsibilities, three governors and three representatives of the sponsors.  Inspectors discussed teaching and pupils’ progress with class teachers. Pupils’ books and records of their progress were also examined.  Inspectors listened to pupils reading and discussed their reading experiences with them.  There were no responses to Parent View, the online questionnaire for parents. Inspectors examined 127 responses from the parents to the school’s own recent survey of their views. They spoke informally to a number of parents in the playground and in school parent/pupil workshops. The inspectors also examined 16 responses to the staff questionnaire.  A range of documentation was examined, including the school’s development plan and analysis

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Information about this inspection

of pupils’ achievement and progress, safeguarding arrangements, school policies, and records of checks made by leaders on the quality of teaching.

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Inspection team

Rodney Braithwaite, Lead inspector Additional Inspector Dennis Brittain Additional Inspector

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Information about this school

 The school is smaller than the average-sized primary school.  St Clement’s Church of England Academy converted to become an academy school in October 2012. When its predecessor school, St Clement’s CoE Primary School was previously inspected by Ofsted in May 2009, it was judged to be inadequate. The Diocese of Birmingham Educational Trust (DBET) sponsors the academy.  Pupils come from over 20 different ethnic heritages. The proportion of pupils who speak English as an additional language is above average.  The proportion of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs , and those who are supported at school action plus or with a statement of special educational needs is average.  Almost three quarters of the pupils are supported by the pupil premium. This is additional government funding for pupils who are in the care of the local authority or known to be eligible for free school meals.

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Information about this school

 The school meets the government’s current floor standards, which set the minimum expectations for pupils’ attainment and progress.  The school has a Nursery which most children attend part-time. There is also a Reception class and six other single-age classes.  The school provides a well-attended daily breakfast club, and many different after-school activities.  Since the school became an academy there have been a number of changes of staff.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Raise the proportion of outstanding teaching so that more pupils make exceptional progress by:  giving pupils more opportunities to develop their numeracy skills in different subjects  helping pupils to develop more self-confidence in both their formal and informal speaking, especially when answering questions or giving explanations.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Children enter the Nursery with skills and experiences well below those typically seen for their age, especially in their language, speaking and social development. Children are eager to learn and quickly make good progress in their social and language skills, although their overall skills remain below those expected for their age upon entry to the Reception class.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Children in Reception, especially those from the school’s Nursery, make good progress in all aspects of their learning, so that by the time they enter Year 1, a good majority reach and sometimes exceed the typical development for their age.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Good progress continues in Years 1 and 2 and the great majority of pupils achieve well. The attainment of pupils for the last eighteen months has been average or in some cases above the average levels expected nationally in reading, writing and mathematics. Data and evidence of pupils’ learning indicate that good progress continues to be made in both years and in some cases is accelerating.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Pupils from all ethnicities in Key Stage 1 make similarly good progress, as do disabled pupils and those with special educational needs. Pupils supported by the pupil premium also make good progress and there is only a very slight gap in attainment between them and other pupils. More- able pupils are being well-challenged and making the progress expected of them.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 In 2013 a high proportion of pupils reached or exceeded the standard expected in Year 1 in the phonics check (letters and the sounds they make), which was well above average.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Progress has not been quite so fast in Years 3 to 6, but is improving rapidly. Although pupils in national tests in 2013 reached standards generally below the average for their age in reading, writing and mathematics, they had made good progress from low starting points. Almost all pupils, including the more-able, made the progress expected of them, and a higher than average number made better than expected progress. Boys made particularly good progress.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 The progress of pupils in these years continues to rise rapidly and there is strong evidence that this is being sustained by better teaching, allied to the excellent attitudes to learning of the pupils.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Pupils’ books throughout Key Stage 2 reflect their good progress with consistent examples of improving writing and mathematical skills, and pride and care in all written activities. Outstanding achievement was observed in a Year 4 English lesson when pupils extended and developed their vocabulary and grammar in their writing using, ‘When, If and Because’ words.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Achievement is good for all groups of pupils, including minority ethnic groups, disabled pupils and those with special educational needs, and those who speak English as an additional language. This reflects the success of the school’s determination that all pupils should have an equal opportunity to succeed.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Pupils supported by the pupil premium make significantly good progress, frequently better than that of other pupils. This is because the school makes outstanding use of the premium fund to provide much skilled individual teaching support for these pupils.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Pupils are very enthusiastic readers and say how much they love reading to adults, or their brothers and sisters. Pupils in Year 6 talk with knowledge about Shakespeare and their enthusiasm for poetry. One commented, ‘reading makes you a different person inside and outside’, and said how much staff helped reading through BRP sessions (Better Reading Partnerships).

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Pupils achieve well across a range of other subjects, but this is still a developing area for the school. Leaders are planning to develop an increasingly stimulating range of learning opportunities. The promotion of literacy, for example, is well-developed in most subjects. However, numeracy has a much lower profile and is not yet introduced enough in the practical aspects of other learning.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teaching has improved considerably in the last eighteen months and continues to do so. It is now consistently good in all years and sometimes outstanding. This is the prime reason for the better and accelerating progress being made by pupils.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Evidence for this was seen in many lessons, in pupils’ books and displays of their work, and in the detailed records of their progress. There is also a large volume of evidence of regular monitoring, evaluation and improvement of teaching by senior leaders, especially the Principal, and external advisors. Governors also play an active part in monitoring teaching.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Consistently good teaching was observed in all years. In Year 5 for example, the teacher promoted good writing skills through the use of interesting adjectives pupils had discovered in their reading of ‘The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad’, a particularly appealing story to them. In this class as in other classes, work in pupils’ books showed that teachers have high expectations of their pupils, and support and guide them consistently through their marking so that they can improve their skills.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teachers ensure that their pupils listen very carefully to instructions about their learning tasks so that they understand what they are doing. This was observed very effectively in Year 2 when pupils not only followed in detail how to decorate and ice their cupcakes, but also instructed their mothers in how to do it.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teachers’ questioning is usually effective, but pupils are not always encouraged to speak confidently in class or, for example, in assemblies. Many pupils are reticent to speak up when replying because they lack self-confidence in more formal situations, although quite happy to chatter at length on the playground.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teachers are very positive in their wish to improve their skills through regular training, much of which is through high quality mentoring by senior leaders in the school. This has been very successful, particularly with five teachers who are in their first year of teaching.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Children in the Reception and Nursery classes make good progress because adults know their needs well and are skilled in guiding each child in their learning. Children benefit also from high quality learning resources, especially in the outside learning area.

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The quality of teaching is good

 The school’s strategy of using the pupil premium fund for the provision of more teachers has been entirely vindicated, as evidenced for example by the rise in standards in physical education and games, which has also benefitted from the astute use of the new sports funding.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teachers work very well with their teaching assistants both in checking pupils’ needs and progress, but also in supporting those in vulnerable circumstances.

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The behaviour and safety of pupils are outstanding

 The behaviour of pupils is outstanding. Pupils have exemplary attitudes to learning. They have a thirst for knowledge, delight in their learning and activities, and are particularly respectful towards their teachers and other adults. They work especially well together in partner work and in small groups.

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The behaviour and safety of pupils are outstanding

 Behaviour in classes is outstanding. This strength has contributed strongly to the rapid progress made by all pupils in the last two years, and to their participation and interest in a wide range of subjects.

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The behaviour and safety of pupils are outstanding

 Pupils explain that their behaviour has improved so much ‘because we have learned to be tolerant, especially in the playground’. They think their teachers ‘make learning fun’ and talk about a wide range of enjoyable activities they have taken part in.

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The behaviour and safety of pupils are outstanding

 Many of these are on educational visits when their behaviour is excellent. This includes visits to the Woodlands residential Adventure Camp, enjoyed by Years 3 and 4 during this inspection; Aston University, regular visits to Birmingham centre and the ‘Sport Olympics’ at the Alexander stadium.

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The behaviour and safety of pupils are outstanding

 Pupils also make a point of saying how much they enjoy Breakfast Club, where their behaviour was observed to be outstanding. They are very proud of their school, and say that they barely notice the wide range of backgrounds and ethnicities there are. All mix together very happily outside and in the dining hall, and move quietly and safely around the school at all times. No racial or significant behavioural issues have been noted since the school became an Academy.

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The behaviour and safety of pupils are outstanding

 A feature of pupils’ behaviour is their enthusiastic response to helping each other, and supporting worldwide charities. During the inspection, children threw themselves into activities to raise money for Christian Aid and Islamic Relief, and were delighted that some parents were also able to join them in making goodies to sell. Correspondingly, these activities help them to have a view of the world they will be entering and the challenges they will face in future.

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The behaviour and safety of pupils are outstanding

 Children in the Nursery and Reception classes are rapid learners, and quickly understand what is expected of them. They soon learn social routines and how to share and take turns and work with each other.

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The behaviour and safety of pupils are outstanding

 The school’s work to keep pupils safe and secure is outstanding. Pupils trust adults in the school implicitly and learn how to be responsible for their own actions. Parents and staff are unanimous in their view that the pupils are safe and very well looked after.

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The behaviour and safety of pupils are outstanding

 Pupils have a good understanding of different types of bullying, and report only the odd isolated example of name-calling, and ‘never’ physical bullying. They also have a good awareness of cyber-bullying and the dangers of the internet.

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The behaviour and safety of pupils are outstanding

 Attendance has improved and is similar to that of schools nationally. Rigorous school procedures are helping to eliminate long term absenteeism. Punctuality is also much improved, but will continue to pose problems for some parents. Those who travel some distance have to negotiate one of the busiest intersections in the country at peak hours which regularly makes access to the school very difficult.

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The leadership and management are good

 A confident and inspirational Principal, well-supported by the Vice-Principal, has succeeded in leading the school forward to consistently good progress since its conversion to an Academy. This has involved developing the skills of many new members of staff in a short time, working with a much-changed governing body, and settling into a rigorous accountability framework promoted by the new school sponsor.

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The leadership and management are good

 The senior leadership has also ensured that the well-being and achievement of its very diverse school community are progressing positively at an ever increasing pace. Teachers, staff and other leaders are all signed up to the aspirations of the senior leaders and governing body demonstrating that the school has a strong capacity to improve further. The school benefits from the leaders’ sharp and accurate checking and analysing its performance.

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The leadership and management are good

 Improvements since the monitoring visit to the school just over a year ago include better language support for pupils who speak English as an additional language, a marked increase in the amount of good teaching, and a much improved contribution to the management of the school by the governors.

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The leadership and management are good

 Subject leaders are beginning to play a greater part in guiding and supporting teachers, but this remains a developing area, mainly because of the recent changes of staff and the need to train new teachers in management roles.

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The leadership and management are good

 Senior leaders’ judgements and management of the quality of teaching and learning are robust and accurate, and teachers are guided very clearly and regularly on how to improve their skills. The teachers new to teaching express appreciation of the intensive coaching and mentoring they have received in the school, which has included detailed safeguarding training by the pastoral manager.

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The leadership and management are good

 The primary school sports funding is being spent on a sports and physical education teacher who trains staff and promotes pupils’ understanding of teamwork and healthy living. In addition many popular after school clubs are supported. As a result of these initiatives pupils are developing a much wider range of physical skills.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school promotes equal opportunities very successfully in a fully multi-cultural and inclusive environment. This, combined with pupils’ excellent attitudes to learning, results in the provision of outstanding spiritual, moral, social and cultural education. There is no discrimination through gender, ethnic heritage, faith, disability or special educational needs.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school works very closely with its sponsor, DBET. The sponsor has a ‘hands-on’ approach, and is as passionate about the school’s provision and performance as the school leaders. The sponsor is always prepared to support the school’s further development.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school works very hard on its partnership and engagement with parents, especially those who are hard to reach or nervous about approaching school staff. Parents are very happy with all aspects of the school, are proud of it and pleased with the achievements of their children, as one commented, ‘It’s the best school in Birmingham’.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leadership is not yet outstanding because the drive of leaders to ensure excellence has not yet resulted in a high enough proportion of outstanding teaching. Consequently, although pupils’ progress is good too few are making rapid progress across all year groups and subjects.

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The leadership and management are good

 The governance of the school:  Governors, several of whom are newly appointed, are led by an experienced Chair, and bring a range of important skills to the management of the school. They have rapidly learned the strengths of the school and its priorities for improvement. This is helping them to hold leaders to account, and is enhanced by governors’ regular visits to classes and detailed reports of these to the whole governing body. Governors have a good knowledge of setting performance targets for the headteacher, and are starting to develop their knowledge of staff performance in relation to the progress of their pupils to inform pay decisions.  Governors have a good knowledge of how the school spends the pupil premium and the resultant outcomes for pupils compared with others in the school. They also have a good understanding of the use of the new sports funding. Governors ensure that safeguarding

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The leadership and management are good

arrangements are fully met, that pupils are kept safe and that school policies are regularly reviewed.

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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 138432 Local authority Birmingham Inspection number 440027 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 Academy sponsor-led Age range of pupils 3–11 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 208 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair John Line Principal Sue Simmons Telephone number 0121 464 4652 Fax number 0121 464 3496 Email address admin@stclemce.bham.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 and 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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