Lincewood Primary School

School report Lincewood Primary School Berry Lane, Langdon Hills, Basildon, SS16 6AZ

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Overall effectiveness

Previous inspection: Requires improvement 3 This inspection: Good 2 Leadership and management Good 2 Behaviour and safety of pupils Good 2 Quality of teaching Good 2 Achievement of pupils Good 2 Early years provision Good 2

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

 The school’s leadership and governors have been swift to act following the school’s last inspection, and this has resulted in rapid and sustained improvement.  Leaders’ systematic checks and more rigorous use of the data on pupils’ performance to hold teachers to account have brought about significant improvements in the quality of teaching.  Leaders have provided well-focussed training, in collaboration with other schools, that has led to clear improvements in pupils’ achievement.  Pupils’ behaviour and attitudes to learning are both good. They concentrate in lessons and take a pride in their school .  Pupils feel safe and understand how to keep themselves safe. Parents are also confident their children are safe at school.  Children in the Early Years Foundation Stage have a good start to their schooling and quickly make progress in acquiring early learning skills.  Pupils in Key Stages 1 and 2 similarly make good

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

progress in reading, writing and mathematics. The achievement of older pupils has accelerated since the last inspection. Standards are above average in reading, writing and mathematics.  Pupils benefit from the lively curriculum. They enjoy the interesting and well-planned topics, visitors to the school and trips that the school provides. These broaden pupils’ experiences and contribute well to their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.  Governors’ knowledge of the school has been significantly improved and they now hold it to account much more effectively.

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It is not yet an outstanding school because

 Teachers do not always plan activities that fully meet pupils’ needs. Occasionally, some more-able pupils repeat things they can already do and other less-able pupils find the work too difficult.  Reading lessons are not always planned well enough to help pupils develop their skills as readers. Pupils are not able to change their reading books as often as they should.  Teachers’ marking does not always give pupils clear guidance on how to improve their work so that they can achieve the targets they have been set.  Not all subject leaders have the thorough understanding of the school’s assessment data they need in order to identify the right priorities for improvement.

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Information about this inspection

 Inspectors observed a range of teaching in classes and groups. All teachers were observed, nearly all jointly with the headteacher and/or deputy headteacher. Playtime and lunchtime were also observed.  Discussions were held with pupils, the headteacher and other staff, and representatives of the governing body and the local authority. The inspector also took account of the 22 staff questionnaires.  Inspectors heard pupils read and checked work in pupils’ books.  School documents were considered, including: the school’s development plans, records of governing body meetings, and safeguarding policies and procedures. A close scrutiny was made of school data on pupils’ progress.  The 92 responses to the online Parent View survey were analysed and 13 parents’ comments were taken into consideration.

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Inspection team

Karen Heath, Lead inspector Additional Inspector

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Information about this school

 This is a larger than average-sized primary school.  Pupils in Years 4, 5 and 6 are taught in ability sets for English and mathematics.  The large majority of pupils are White British, with the others coming from a range of different ethnic backgrounds.  The proportion of pupils who speak English as an additional language is average.  The proportion of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs supported at School Action is average. The proportion supported at Action Plus or with a statement is average. A small number of pupils have statements of education, health and care plans.  The proportion of disadvantaged pupils, who are eligible for the pupil premium, is average.  In 2014, the school met the government’s current floor standards, which set the minimum expectations for pupils’ attainment and progress at the end of Year 6 in English and mathematics.  In the past year, the school has received support from a National Leader in Education (NLE).

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Improve the quality of teaching so that all pupils, including the most- and least-able pupils, consistently make good progress by:  planning work that is neither too easy or too hard and is carefully matched to pupils’ needs and abilities  providing more challenge for pupils to develop and apply their reading skills and provide more regular opportunities for pupils to change their reading books  ensuring that the guidance pupils get from teachers’ marking is clear and precise enough to help them meet their achievement targets.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Develop the skills of subject leaders so that they have a thorough understanding of pupils’ assessment data and can identify more accurately the improvement priorities for their areas of responsibility.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school has made rapid improvement since its last inspection. Leaders have encouraged a sense of ambition in pupils and this had led to a ‘can do’ atmosphere where all are keen to do their best and behave well. The drive to accelerate pupils’ progress is led purposefully by senior leaders and their commitment is shared by all teaching and non-teaching staff. Leaders now make more frequent checks on the quality of teaching and progress of all pupils, and this has had a positive impact on pupils’ achievement.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school has successfully collaborated with other schools to improve the skills of teachers and leaders. It has actively sought external support, including from a National Leader in Education, to ensure it has been on the right track during its journey of improvement.

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The leadership and management are good

 The use of pupils’ assessment data to track progress and attainment has been a key driver in improving achievement across the school. Senior leaders make good use of information about pupils’ assessment to make judgements about the quality of teaching and to identify pupils and groups of pupils where progress is slowing. Gaps in pupils’ learning are now being quickly identified. Consequently, most pupils make good progress, although the most and least able could sometimes achieve more. Not all subject leaders have sufficient in-depth understanding of this data or are able to talk with clarity about the school’s strengths and weaknesses or use it to identify appropriate priorities for development in their areas of responsibility.

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The leadership and management are good

 The pupil premium funding is being used effectively to support eligible groups and individuals. Last year Governors approved additional teaching time in Years 5 and 6 so that pupils can have lessons in smaller groups and ability sets. The beneficial impact of this approach could be seen during the inspection and has now been extended to year 4, several pupils told inspectors that they felt the work was becoming more challenging and they had to think really hard.

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The leadership and management are good

 Pupils told inspectors about the improvements in the range of sports available in school and the sports coaching they have received which has been funded by the primary sports grant. Boys and girls benefit from some high-quality coaching in a range of sports such as netball, football rugby hockey and athletics as well as opportunities for swimming. Pupils are proud of their astro-turf pitch and enjoy inter-school competitions. All this has helped them develop a greater appreciation of the importance of a healthy life- style.

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The leadership and management are good

 Pupils enjoy a broad and balanced curriculum, which supports the spiritual, social cultural and moral development of the pupils well and is helping to prepare pupils for life in modern Britain. Visits and visitors enrich the curriculum experiences available to pupils, and they talk enthusiastically about the different topics and subjects they enjoy and how the outdoor area is used to help them learn. They particularly enjoyed looking for evidence of the plot lands when people were evacuated to Basildon during the Second World War. The school is currently reviewing its curriculum and assessment arrangements in the light of the changes in the new National Curriculum.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school makes good use of collective worship to encourage spiritual reflection and make pupils aware of world issues and how they impact on our culture A Year 6 assembly, attended by parents, had been well-researched by pupils to explore the theme of Black History. Pupils spoke confidently about how discrimination needs to be challenged; this showed a high degree of understanding of why the race Discrimination Act had been introduced in the UK, and reflects the school’s determination to combat prejudice and ensure equality of opportunity for all its pupils.

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The leadership and management are good

 Teachers and non-teaching staff have received support and training in the teaching of phonics and this has had a significant impact on improving achievement of pupils in acquiring basic reading skills. However, leaders are aware that teachers do not always build on these early skills by planning effective reading lessons that help pupils develop more advanced reading skills. Teachers do not provide sufficient opportunities for pupils to change their reading books to increase their enjoyment. They have identified this as a priority for improvement.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leaders have recently introduced a new marking policy but this is not yet ensuring that the guidance teachers give is always clear enough. Pupils spoken to during the inspection were keen to use the ‘purple polishing pens’ to edit or correct their work, and a review of their books showed that they were responding to teachers’ marking. However, in some books pupils could only write comments such as ‘Yes I will try harder’ because there was no specific guidance on what the pupil needed to do to improve or how to achieve the targets they had been set.

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The leadership and management are good

 Good support from the local authority has provided the school with an informed view on how it is progressing towards improvement since the last inspection and has complemented the additional support the school has sought independently.

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The leadership and management are good

 The governance of the school:  Governors are knowledgeable about the school and the quality of teaching. They are committed to driving improvement forward. While they are fully supportive of the school they are equally determined to hold it to account; individual governors have monitored the school’s work, written evaluative reports and carried out exit interviews with Year 6 pupils to see how the school could be further improved.  Governors have a good grasp of performance and other data and understand what it says about pupils’ progress. This enables them to challenge the headteacher and senior leaders when pupils are not achieving as well as they could.  Governors ensure that the school is held to account for the effectiveness of the way it spends the pupil premium funding; for example, the introduction of ability sets in Years 5 and 6 as part of the school’s strategy to help these pupils was fully debated before this was implemented.

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The leadership and management are good

 Governors have supported the headteacher in ensuring teachers’ performance management is being implemented effectively and meets the school’s priorities, and that weak teaching is being tackled and good teaching rewarded.  Governors ensure that safeguarding procedures meet statutory requirements.

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Behaviour

 The behaviour of pupils is good. Relationships between staff and pupils are very positive. Pupils have good attitudes to learning and are proud of their school, particularly its facilities. The outside areas provide good opportunities where pupils play well together in an environment which is carefully maintained and kept clean and free from litter.

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Behaviour

 Pupils are very clear about what kinds of behaviour is acceptable and what would happen if pupils misbehave. Pupils of different ages get on well together. Older pupils enjoy having leadership responsibilities and take the initiative by looking after the younger ones. Pupils talked readily to inspectors about how the school councillors helped them to resolve any friendship issues.

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Behaviour

 Attendance rates have risen over the last three years. They have improved as a result of the robust action taken by school leaders in tackling pupils’ absences. Leaders have ensured that parents understand the impact on pupils’ education if they are taken out of school for holidays during term time and know about the likely consequence of penalty notices.

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Safety

 The school’s work to keep pupils safe and secure is good. Correct procedures are followed when appointing new staff. All newly appointed staff are given induction training in the school’s safeguarding procedures.

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Safety

 Pupils feel safe at school and are confident that the school deals effectively with bullying, even though incidents are rare. Pupils have a good understanding of different types of bullying and how the use of certain words could be offensive to others.

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Safety

 The school ensures pupils fully understand the possible dangers when using computers. Pupils are able to discuss in detail the risks of cyber-bullying and showed a good understanding of staying safe while using the internet.

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The quality of teaching is good

 The good progress the great majority of pupils now make provides clear evidence that teaching is good overall and improving. Teachers have good subject knowledge and use it effectively, particularly in writing, mathematics and science. In a lesson about teeth, for example, the teacher’s own confident grasp of technical language helped to reinforce what the pupils had previously learned. Pupils then engaged in good discussion which resulted in well-expressed and reasoned arguments about which animals the skulls belonged to.

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The quality of teaching is good

 The teaching of reading is frequently good but is not as consistently strong as it is in writing and mathematics. The teaching of phonics is good but other reading lessons do not consistently ensure that pupils develop broader reading skills, such as the ability to discuss an author’s style or to describe the key features of a chosen book. Pupils do not always get the opportunity to change their reading book as soon as they have finished it.

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The quality of teaching is good

 The best teaching is stimulating and quickly engages pupils’ interest. Teachers explain to pupils at the start of the lesson what is expected of them and how they will know if they have been successful; consequently pupils understand what to do. In one lesson, pupils were excited by the opportunity to create their own story based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. They were engrossed watching a clip from the film and this enthused them to experiment with a range of adjectives when writing a description of their own ‘magic sweet’. Pupils are regularly challenged to apply their computation skills by solving mathematical problems, for example by planning a holiday with a limited budget.

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The quality of teaching is good

 The learning environment in classrooms is bright and attractive. There are useful resources and learning aids to which the pupils can refer during lessons; for example any alternative vocabulary they might need to find is attractively displayed. Clearly presented ‘learning walls’ in mathematics also help pupils work out any of the more difficult calculations they have been set.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Support for disadvantaged and disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs is generally good. Teaching Assistants work closely with teaching staff and are used effectively. The quality of their questioning is good and this helps to improve pupils’ understanding, particularly in the case of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs. Some teaching assistants teach small groups and make good use of opportunities to give pupils individual attention and to go over aspects of the learning they find difficult, so that they catch up with the others.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Although teachers’ lesson plans show they have given considerable thought to providing tasks that are suitable for different abilities, teachers do not always check whether pupils find the work too easy or too hard. At times, some of the most-able pupils repeat work they can already do, which slows up their progress, whilst other less-able pupils struggle because they find the work too difficult.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Marking in books is in line with the school’s policy to affirm what pupils have done well and point out what needs to be corrected or improved. However, the comments teachers write do not always give sufficient guidance on how the pupil might meet the targets they have been set and some pupils, particularly the younger ones, do not always understand what their targets are.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Achievement is good overall. By the time they leave, above-average proportions of pupils now make better than expected progress in reading, writing and mathematics. In 2014, the great majority of pupils in Year 6 attained at least the expected level for their age in reading, writing and mathematics. Many made more than expected progress, and their results represented a further improvement on 2013.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Pupils leave Year 1 having acquired good phonics knowledge and with results that are consistently well above average in the national screening test. By the end of Key Stage 1, pupils achieve standards that are broadly in line with the national average in reading, writing and mathematics.  The most-able pupils achieve well in writing, including spelling grammar and punctuation, and mathematics. However, their achievement is not quite as good in reading as it is in other subjects and here, they are not always given sufficiently challenging work.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs in all year groups make steady progress from their starting points. The school’s inclusion manager organises a range of group and individual programmes for this group of pupils to support their learning in class, and give clear direction to the teaching assistants who support these pupils. Occasionally, the work set for the least-able pupils is too difficult and they do not consistently make as much progress as they could.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 The progress of disadvantaged pupils eligible for the pupil premium is similar to others in the school. The attainment of this group of pupils in English and mathematics in 2014 was broadly the same as other pupils nationally. The gap between their attainment and that of their peers in school has narrowed in writing and mathematics in the past year but, in reading, this group of pupils were about one term behind by the end of Key Stage 2.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Pupils’ work in their topic books, which includes a range of subjects such as history and geography, shows that they apply the skills they have learned in English and mathematics well. They are able to express themselves clearly and use technical language and scientific vocabulary accurately, analyse charts and graphs appropriately and take pride in the presentation of their work.

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The early years provision is good

 Children coming into the Reception class soon become engrossed in the stimulating activities provided by staff, both in the classroom and outside. Induction arrangements are good and parents value the ‘Welcome Boxes’ which children bring to school to share their favourite things from home when they first start; this helps to bridge the gap between home and school.

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The early years provision is good

 Children enter the Reception class with low starting points, particularly in their language development but go on to achieve well. Their language and social development are supported by adults’ own careful pronunciation and breadth of vocabulary. Activities are invariably well thought out. In one session, children working together outside were experimenting with a gutter run to see how balls travelled down it. They were able to discuss with each other what was happening and confidently offered explanations to the adult supporting them.

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The early years provision is good

 Teaching is good and ensures pupils are well-prepared for entry to Year 1. Adults engage effectively with children, posing questions and helping children to respond in full sentences to encourage good communication and language skills. Children concentrate well during adult-led activities; for example, pupils were able to put themselves in numerical order using number cards concentrating throughout the session. This skill was further developed outside where pupils were focussed on finding hidden numbers during a number hunt and recording their results on clipboards.

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The early years provision is good

 Parents talk enthusiastically about how the school supports them by, for example, providing guidance through reading workshops to help them with their child’s reading. They feel that staff are approachable and that they are made to feel at ease about discussing any issue. They say they are pleased because their children ‘want to come to school.’

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The early years provision is good

 The classrooms are bright and stimulating places to learn in and equipment is made easily accessible for children so they can organise activities for themselves. They independently take their snack and register their name without help. They are sufficiently confident to try new activities joining groups of children and sharing the enjoyment these new experiences offer. The outside area promotes all areas of learning well and children enjoy using it for role play and developing their balance on bikes.

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The early years provision is good

 Leadership of the Early Years Foundation Stage is good and this is reflected in the good outcomes for children from their starting points. Transition arrangements with other providers ensure staff are familiar with the needs of the children before they start. The calm and purposeful atmosphere in the classrooms shows how quickly children settle into their new setting.

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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 failing

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Grade Judgement Description

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 134022 Local authority Essex Inspection number 451746

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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 4–11 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 418 Appropriate authority The local authority Chair Stuart Hayter Headteacher Tim Eastwell Date of previous school inspection 5 November 2013 Telephone number 01268 412888 Fax number 01268 491139 Email address admin@lincewood.essex.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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