Flyford Flavell Primary School

Flyford Flavell First School Radford Road, Flyford Flavell, Worcester, WR7 4BS

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Overall effectiveness

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

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This is a school that requires improvement. It is not good because

 The quality of teaching is not yet consistently good enough to ensure that all pupils, especially the most able, are sufficiently challenged.  The more able pupils do not make consistently good progress through the school.  Some middle leadership roles are not yet fully effective.  Leaders have not made sure the right things are covered fully in every subject.  Some mathematical skills, such as those to do with shape, are not developed well enough.

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The school has the following strengths

 Teaching is improving strongly because the headteacher’s expectations are high.  Standards have improved in writing because a consistent approach is used throughout the school.  Children in the Reception year make good progress.  Pupils enjoy school, feel safe, behave well and have positive attitudes to learning.  Good provision for physical education and sports motivates pupils to participate and helps them to lead a healthy active life.  The school has a good capacity to continue improving. The headteacher provides strong leadership and together with governors and staff has set clear, relevant priorities for improvement.

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Information about this inspection

 The inspector visited all classrooms to observe pupils’ learning, talked with the pupils about their work and looked through their books. Some of these activities were undertaken jointly with the headteacher.  The inspector heard some pupils read and observed pupils’ behaviour during playtimes, lunchtime and at the beginning and end of the school day.  Meetings were held with members of staff, groups of pupils, a representative of the local authority and five governors.  The responses of 37 parents to Ofsted's online survey, Parent View, were taken into account, alongside the school’s recent parental questionnaire and comments made to the inspector by parents. The views of staff were also considered, including 16 completed staff questionnaire returns.  A range of documents were examined, including safeguarding policies and procedures, the school’s view of its own performance and records of the progress of past and current pupils.

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Inspection team

Peter Kerr, Lead inspector Additional Inspector

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Information about this school

 Flyford Flavell First School is smaller than the average-sized primary school.  Most pupils are of White British heritage.  The proportion of pupils for whom the school receives the additional funding known as the pupil premium is two per cent, which is low compared with the national average for primary schools.  The proportion of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs is four per cent, which is low compared to the national average for primary schools.  The Reception class provides a full-time early years curriculum for children aged four to five.  A new permanent headteacher was appointed in September 2014.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Bring the quality of teaching up to a consistently good level in all subjects by ensuring that all teachers:  use their assessments of pupils' existing knowledge, skills and interests to provide challenging and interesting starting points for all pupils in lessons  observe and listen carefully to pupils during lessons and change tasks if it they are not challenging enough so that all pupils, including the most able, have to think hard.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Increase pupils' enthusiasm for and improve their achievements in mathematics by:  including activities in lessons to help pupils deepen their mathematical understanding, explore mathematical patterns in numbers and shapes and tackle problems creatively  ensuring that pupils develop their wider mathematical skills, where possible, in other subjects.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Improve the leadership and management of the school by:  ensuring that leadership and management roles are appropriately and effectively delegated as new appointments are made  continuing to support existing post-holders to make a full contribution to raising standards across the school  helping post-holders to ensure that all aspects of subjects are covered, including creative skills.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 Currently, school improvement relies too heavily on the headteacher. For example, responsibility for checking the way essential things are covered in all the subjects and topics taught rests with the headteacher, and there remain weaknesses in the curriculum in some areas, for instance mathematics and music.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 In mathematics, leadership is improving but the effectiveness of cross-subject links is patchy. Pupils use their literacy skills well in other subjects but do not apply and consolidate their mathematics skills enough. For example, they do not make the most of pupils’ enjoyment of art to develop their understanding of both mathematics and design, for instance creating art work based on mathematical shapes. Pupils do occasionally use measuring skills and graphs to illustrate work in science.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 Some middle leadership posts have only recently been established and have not yet had time to become fully effective. The headteacher is working with governors to ensure better delegation and develop staff leadership skills. Leadership is improving in mathematics, and calculating skills are taught systematically.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 The curriculum includes a variety of interesting experiences, for example regular opportunities for off-site learning in the forest schools area, on-site camping in Year 3 and a residential adventure visit in Year 4. In music, instrumental lessons are available, but there are limited opportunities for all pupils to practice and improve creative skills as part of normal lessons.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 The headteacher has established clear, strong leadership following an unsettled period in the management of the school. High expectations have been set for the quality of teaching. Monitoring is rigorous and staff are given appropriate support to meet the demands made of them. Areas of underperformance that have been identified have been remedied effectively.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 The great majority of parents and staff rightly agree that this is currently a school in which teaching and good behaviour can flourish. As one member of staff put it: I feel confident and enthusiastic because the headteacher knows where she wants to take the school.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 The headteacher is currently leading literacy, which she is doing effectively. Recent improvements in the quality of pupils' writing reflect the effective teamwork between headteacher and staff this term. This had been a key area for improvement and teachers say they appreciate the consistent guidance they now have to sustain this momentum.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 Assemblies consolidate and enhance the feeling of community in the school and moral values are strongly promoted. Pupils benefit from good links with the local community, including the church.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 Developing liaison with the middle school is helping the school to avoid duplicating topics in the school’s planning for the new 2014 curriculum. Links with other schools with different intakes were established following the previous inspection to provide pupils with some insights into the diversity that exists beyond their own locality. Although some of these links have lapsed, pupils learn enough about different communities to prepare them for further learning at the middle school and for their future life in modern Britain.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 Provision for special educational needs is led and managed well. Teachers take full responsibility for the pupils in their class who have special needs and the special educational needs coordinator regularly checks the impact of the support given and the rate of pupils' progress.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 The pupil premium is used effectively to help those pupils to whom it applies and staff monitor the progress and personal development of the recipients to make sure the funds are having the intended impact.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 The primary physical education and sports funding is used very effectively to motivate pupils to participate in healthy active pursuits. The range of attractive resources purchased for playtimes and lunchtimes are in constant use. This helps pupils to improve their skills and gain confidence in team games. Additional gymnastics expertise in lessons is helping pupils to enjoy and become better at gymnastics and additional sports coaching is widening participation in competitive sports.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 The school effectively ensures equality of opportunity and tackles possible discrimination. Pupils with specific physical disabilities receive highly effective specialist support to fully engage in lessons and any gaps in learning are identified, closely monitored and closed as rapidly as is possible.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 Arrangements for safeguarding closely follow local authority guidelines and meet all statutory requirements. They are managed and overseen very efficiently by the school secretary.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 The local authority has provided extensive support to the school over the past year. It worked closely with the governors, at their request, to stabilise leadership and management and appoint a new permanent headteacher for September 2014. It now provides a much lower level of support as it has confidence in the headteacher and governors to maintain the momentum in school improvement.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 The governance of the school:  Governors acknowledge that they were not fully aware of slippages in the quality of provision over recent years until they enlisted the help of the local authority to identify what could be done to stabilise leadership and management.  Since the appointment of the current headteacher, governors feel well informed about the quality of teaching throughout the school and the progress that pupils are making and they contribute positively to school improvement. They now have a much better understanding of data about how well the school is doing.  Governors demonstrate a good understanding of what is required to improve teaching, especially the need to challenge the most able pupils to fulfil their potential.  The school has robust systems to enable governors to ensure that salaries and promotions reflect contributions that members of staff make to pupils’ progress and school improvement. They have

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The leadership and management requires improvement

supported the headteacher well to ensure that any areas of underperformance have been robustly tackled.

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Behaviour

 The behaviour of pupils is good. The school is a friendly, calm place in which to learn. All the parents who expressed a view agreed that their children are happy in school; the great majority strongly agreed. This is reflected in consistently high attendance rates.

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Behaviour

 Behaviour is good at playtimes, lunchtimes and when pupils move around the school. Pupils obey school rules, are courteous to adults and supportive of one another. They take pride in their work and enjoy all aspects of school life, particularly their friendships.

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Behaviour

 Pupils play enthusiastically in the playground, making full use of the wide range or equipment and marked areas to practise skills and play team games. They have a strong sense of fair play. When asked how they would improve the school, a group of them agreed that the most useful thing would be an umpire’s chair to settle debates about whether the ball was in or out during a game!

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Behaviour

 Pupils are keen to learn. They listen carefully to teachers and apply themselves diligently to tasks. In lessons in which they have opportunities to extend themselves and show what they can do, they excel.

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Behaviour

 Pupils enjoy taking on responsibilities, for example supervising the distribution and collection of equipment at playtimes. They talk enthusiastically about the activities they do beyond lessons, such as sports, camping, residential visits and music tuition.

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Behaviour

 The school encourages pupils to feel part of the wider community through visits to places of interest and raising money for local charities. The pupils recall visits to local churches and other places of worship and understand that beyond their own locality there is much more diversity in cultures and religions than they usually encounter.

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Safety

 The school’s work to keep pupils safe and secure is good. All the responses to Parent View agreed that their children feel safe. The great majority strongly agreed. Pupils know that if they feel threatened in any way they can go to an adult for help and they will be listened to.

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Safety

 Pupils are very positive about the way school cares for them and keeps them safe. They have a good understanding about how to reduce risk to themselves in a range of situations both within and beyond school, including when using the internet.

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Safety

 Pupils have a good understanding of the different forms that bullying can take and are confident that members of staff will listen and deal quickly with incidents that arise. They say that bullying is very rare and school records confirm this.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Teaching requires improvement because it does not provide a consistently good enough level of challenge for the more able pupils. Lessons are planned in detail, with simplified tasks and extra support for pupils who may find the new learning difficult. Provision for those who may find the new learning easy is less well thought out.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Clear introductions to lessons make sure that pupils know what is expected of them. Teachers ask questions to check pupils’ understanding, but do not always listen carefully enough to their responses to identify those whose level of understanding would enable them to start on more demanding tasks.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Teachers work closely with teaching assistants to supervise the pupils as they work, giving them any help that is needed to complete the set tasks. This helps most of the pupils learn what was intended, but does not consistently ensure that the most able make suitable gains in their knowledge, understanding and skills.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Examples were seen in both English and mathematics of learning slowing for the most able pupils because they were not made to think deeply about what they were doing. In English, when tasks were the same for pupils of all abilities they offered insufficient scope for more able pupils to develop their own ideas and reach higher levels. In mathematics, when the more able and most able pupils finished tasks, they were sometimes given new tasks that did not deepen their understanding or extend their skills.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Some good examples were seen of teachers challenging the most able to make good progress by observing closely how they tackled their work and inspiring them to greater efforts. For example, even the most able Year 4 pupils improved links between two consecutive sections of a story to make it cohesive because of the way the teacher got the pupils to listen carefully to one another’s attempts, discuss what worked best and then incorporate these approaches into their own pieces.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 The pupils' writing shows that when teachers encourage pupils to reflect on their own feelings and those of others, and write about things relevant to them, the resultant work is varied and mature. In cases where the material does not engage the pupils' emotions or personal experience, outcomes tend not to be as good.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Despite the weaknesses in mathematics, there were some examples of wider aspects of the subject being taught well to able pupils. The most able Year 3 pupils made good progress when those who had finished the set tasks on fractions were encouraged and supported to explore patterns. They did so confidently and made good progress in understanding equivalent fractions, which was beyond what had been planned for the lesson.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Phonics (the links between sounds and letters) are taught systematically throughout the school, ensuring that pupils develop good spelling skills. Handwriting is taught effectively so pupils develop a neat cursive script and teachers also set appropriate expectations for punctuation and grammar. As a result, the standard of pupils’ best writing on display is good and the pupils’ books show good progress in writing over this term.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Teaching is good for disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs. Very effective support is provided to pupils to overcome barriers to learning presented by physical disabilities, enabling them to make optimum progress.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Pupils' achievements require improvement because the most able pupils are not building consistently well enough on what they can already do, and because in mathematics, pupils are not doing well enough in aspects other than calculating.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Standards vary from year to year as there are small numbers in each year group. At the end of Years 2 and 4, each cohort (year group of pupils) has broadly similar levels of attainment compared to their peers nationally as they had two years earlier.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Most pupils make at least the expected progress in Years 1 to 4, and some lower or middle ability pupils make more progress than is expected. This leads to lower ability pupils catching up with others but the most able do not make enough progress to reach the high standards of which they are capable.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Sometimes the pupils' willingness and ability to take the initiative in their own learning is overlooked and they are restricted to completing tasks which are well within their capability because these have been planned for that particular lesson. When this happens, their interest levels drop and their learning slows.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Pupils are very confident in their speaking and performing skills. For example, the whole of Year 2 confidently recited the story of the little red hen without needing prompts. Lessons do not always build sufficiently on these abilities for the most able pupils to reach as high standards as they could in this aspect of communication and literacy.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 The work in most pupils' books confirms that progress in writing and mathematics is broadly what is expected. Some lower and middle attaining pupils make better progress than this because they tackle work that is challenging for them, and similar to more able pupils in the same class.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Pupils enjoy singing and sing well. A number of them learn to play musical instruments and those seen in drumming lessons were enjoying their learning and making good progress.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Most pupils do enjoy mathematics, but typically regard this as mostly about number problems. They do not spend enough time building their understanding of other aspects of the subject. For example, they know less about shape and space than they do about numbers.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs make good progress because the work they are given is pitched at just the right level. On occasions, they make exceptional progress because of the skilled and sensitive support and encouragement provided by both teachers and teaching assistants.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Disadvantaged pupils eligible for pupil premium funding make good progress relative to their starting points during the time at the school. Numbers are too small to report on their standards reached by the end of Year 4.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Children make rapid progress in the Reception year and often begin Year 1 with good levels of development.

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The early years provision is good

 The setting is well led and managed and teaching is consistently good. The staff feel empowered by the headteacher to use their professional judgement in planning lessons and organising resources to facilitate a good balance between teaching the children new skills and supporting their learning as they play.

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The early years provision is good

 The indoor and outdoor areas provide a well-organised, safe and stimulating environment, which enables the children to make rapid progress in their personal and physical development, communication skills and all other aspects of the early years curriculum.

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The early years provision is good

 The children feel safe and secure and behave well. They know and follow class and school rules and are kind and helpful to each other. They enjoy learning and concentrate well for their age. This helps them to get the most from lessons.

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The early years provision is good

 The staff encourage the children to make decisions for themselves. For example, the children were initially hesitant when starting to build a shelter, asking permission to get things they needed. With encouragement, they gained confidence in independently choosing resources from around the room and collaborating to build a frame, cover it securely and furnish their new den.

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The early years provision is good

 Assessment is good. Staff interact with the children purposefully as they play, observing them closely, asking them questions and listening carefully to what they say to gauge their understanding. From these observations they build an accurate picture of each child’s progress, which is recorded clearly and discussed with parents.

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The early years provision is good

 The children arrive from a number of nursery settings with differing levels of development but most are within a typical range. They make good progress so that by the end of Reception, most children are well prepared for Year 1.

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The early years provision is good

 Disabled children and those who have special educational needs learn well because their needs are accurately identified and appropriate individual support provided. The most-able children are supported to learn by challenging work and discovering things for themselves, and they also make rapid progress.

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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 116676 Local authority Worcestershire Inspection number 448495

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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 First School category Community Age range of pupils 4–9 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 94 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Anne Howarth Headteacher Rosalind Brotherton Date of previous school inspection 16 November 2009 Telephone number 01386 462228 Fax number 01386 462228 Email address office@flyfordflavell.worcs.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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