Kingswood Primary School and Nursery

The Kingswood Junior School Clay Hill Road, Basildon, SS16 5DE

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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

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

 Leaders carry out regular and effective checks on the quality of teaching. As a result, teaching has improved since the school was last inspected.  The progress of pupils is monitored and appropriate support put in place. As a result, pupils’ progress has improved.  Leaders plan well for school improvement, recognising key priorities.  Year 6 pupils left the school in 2013 and 2014 with standards in writing which were above average, and standards in reading and mathematics which were broadly average.  The proportion of pupils now on track to attain the higher levels in reading and mathematics are increasing.  Pupils and parents rightly believe that pupils are safe at the school.  Pupils have positive attitudes to learning and apply themselves fully in lessons. They enjoy their learning and are proud of their achievements.  Pupils are polite and respectful to one another and to adults. The school promotes pupils’ social, moral,

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

spiritual and cultural development well.  Leaders engage well with parents and have strong partnerships with other schools through their work with the Basildon Education Services Trust.  Parents are overwhelmingly supportive of leaders. They speak enthusiastically of their experiences.  Governors have high aspirations for pupils’ achievement. They ask searching questions of leaders and hold staff to account.

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It is not yet an outstanding school because

 Teachers and adults in lessons do not always identify gaps in pupils’ learning before moving them on to new work.  Teachers do not always use information about the standards at which different pupils are working to set work at the right level for them. As a result work is occasionally too hard or too easy.  The support provided to pupils who have weak understanding of letters and sounds (phonics) is not as good as it should be. This hinders pupils’ progress in reading.  Leaders’ evaluations of how well the school is doing do not fully consider the progress made by different groups of pupils in Years 3 to 5.

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Information about this inspection

 Inspectors observed pupils’ learning in all classes. They visited a range of subjects, including English, mathematics, science, French and physical education. They looked at pupils’ work in lessons and separately with senior leaders.  They listened to pupils reading and held discussions with pupils in formal meetings and at informal times of the day. They observed pupils at break and lunch times.  Inspectors met with senior leaders, subject and inclusion leaders. They also met with a representative from the local authority, an adviser from the Basildon Excellence Panel and the Director of Basildon Education Services Trust, as well as the governing body.  The 20 responses from parents to the online parent survey Parent View were considered, as well as comments made to inspectors by parents during the inspection. Comments made by parents in the school’s own parent survey were also taken into account. The questionnaire responses from 21 staff were

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Information about this inspection

also analysed.  Inspectors looked at a range of documentation. This included information relating to the attainment and progress of pupils across all classes and groups, and individual pupils across the school, information about the monitoring of teaching and the management of staff performance, school improvement plans, a self- evaluation summary, external evaluations of the school, minutes of governing body meetings, and information provided on the school’s website. Behaviour logs and safeguarding information were also considered.

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Inspection team

Najoud Ensaff, Lead inspector Additional Inspector

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Information about this school

 Kingswood Junior School is an average-sized junior school.  The large majority of pupils come from White British backgrounds, with the next two largest groups of pupils coming from African and Indian backgrounds. The proportion who speak English as an additional language is below average.  At about one in six of the pupils, the proportion of disabled pupils and those with special educational needs is average.  The school receives pupil premium funding for more than one in five of the pupils. This is just below average. The pupil premium is additional funding is for disadvantaged pupils, including those known to be eligible for free school meals and those in local authority care.  In 2014, the school met the government’s floor standards, which set the minimum expectations for pupils’ attainment and progress.  The headteacher of the junior school is executive headteacher of a neighbouring infant school (Kingswood

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Information about this school

Infant School). There are plans for the junior and infant schools to amalgamate in the next academic year.  The school works in partnership with other schools. Together they provide workshops for parents and training for staff. The school also provides support to other local schools as part of a gifted and talented programme linked to science.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Raise the quality of teaching to outstanding by ensuring that:  teachers and adults check that pupils understand what they are being taught before they are moved on in their learning  teachers always set work at the right level, so that it is neither too hard nor too easy.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Strengthen leadership and management by ensuring that:  leaders give equal attention to the progress made by different groups of pupils in all years  adults are better equipped to support pupils’ knowledge of letters and sounds (phonics).

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The leadership and management are good

 Senior leaders have been successful in improving the rates of progress for pupils. They have tackled all areas for improvement from the last inspection, thus improving teaching in the school. All staff share leaders’ ambitious vision for raising pupils’ achievement.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leaders work well with other schools to provide training for staff and workshops for parents. They engage well with parents, seeking their views regularly. The parents who responded to the Parent View online survey and who spoke to inspectors were very positive about their experiences with the school. They recognise the dedication of the headteacher and appreciate his, and the deputy headteacher’s, visibility in the mornings. They commented on the approachability of staff and indicated that any concerns they have are always acted upon.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leaders and governors have ensured that additional funding is making a difference to disadvantaged pupils’ learning. The impact of the pupil premium is very evident in the very strong progress made by eligible pupils and the standards attained by them by the end of Year 6.

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The leadership and management are good

 Sports funding is used effectively; for example, in helping to improve the skills of teachers and to coach pupils. Leaders’ evaluations last year indicate that this funding has had a positive impact on pupils’ participation in sports and their performance in tournaments.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leaders promote equality of opportunity well, ensuring that, by the end of Year 6, any differences between the achievements of pupils are closing. Pupils are confident that discrimination is not tolerated.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leaders, including subject leaders, work effectively to monitor teaching and the progress of pupils. They make regular checks on teaching through visits to lessons, by looking at plans for learning and at work in books. Not all subject leaders are currently involved in observing lessons.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leaders have a clear understanding of the strengths in the school and correctly identify key priorities. These have led to actions for improvement which have helped the school to get better.

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The leadership and management are good

 Termly progress review meetings and follow up discussions with individual teachers mean that senior leaders identify gaps in learning, and put in place appropriate support. For example, they identified the need to improve the support offered to pupils in skimming and scanning reading texts. Appropriate training for staff and support for pupils in this key skill have improved the number of pupils who are on track to attain higher levels in reading in Year 6 this year.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leaders take full consideration of the attainment and progress of Year 6 pupils, including the progress of different groups, when evaluating how well the school is doing. However, they do not make as much use of the information gained from progress review meetings of other year groups so that they can maintain the momentum of improvement throughout the school.

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The leadership and management are good

 The inclusion leader has put in place a programme of support for pupils in phonics. However, leaders recognise that the support provided to pupils in their phonics is not as good as it could be because the skills of adults in supporting pupils in this area are not up to date. As a result, some pupils who join the school with weak phonics skills do not make as much progress as they should in reading.

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The leadership and management are good

 Subjects are well planned and ensure that pupils have good opportunities to apply literacy and numeracy skills in a range of subjects. Assemblies, enrichment activities and lessons promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development well. Alongside pupils’ participation in school council and eco-council, these help pupils to prepare for life in modern Britain.

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The leadership and management are good

 The local authority is supporting the school in preparing for amalgamation with the neighbouring infant school. Other support for the school has been devolved to the Basildon Excellence Panel. This support has been effective, for example, in eliminating differences between the achievement of girls and boys in mathematics.

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The leadership and management are good

 Partnership work with the neighbouring infant school has improved in the last year. This has helped by ensuring smoother arrangements for pupils moving into Year 3. The two schools are also now working closer together over the assessment of pupils so that there is now greater agreement between them over the levels at which pupils start in Year 3. Leaders have been proactive in seeking external validation of their own self-evaluation judgements and teachers’ assessment.

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The leadership and management are good

 The governance of the school:  Governors are ambitious for pupils. They have a clear idea about strengths and areas for development in the school. They know about the quality of teaching in the school and how pupils’ achievement compares to other pupils nationally.  Governors ask searching questions; for example, in relation to how pupil premium and sports funding are being used. They check on the impact that extra funding has had on and pupils’ achievement.  Governors ensure that staff are held to account. There is clear correlation between teachers meeting performance management targets and salary progression. Governors ensure that arrangements for pupils’ safeguarding meet all statutory requirements.

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Behaviour

 The behaviour of pupils is good. They are polite, respectful and helpful. They socialise well together in lessons and at break times. Pupils show good attitudes to learning, engaging well in lessons.

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Behaviour

 Pupils attend regularly and they say that they enjoy school. They are proud of their achievements and eager to talk about what they have learnt.

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Behaviour

 Behaviour logs and inspectors’ observations confirm that pupils’ behaviour is good.

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Behaviour

 Pupils present work neatly and they take care over their environment. They understand about the workings of democracy through their participation in debates and on the school council.

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Behaviour

 A small minority of pupils can become easily distracted when the work is not set at the right level for them. The vast majority of pupils have good attitudes to learning and persevere when faced with a challenging problem, trying hard to find solutions.

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Safety

 The school’s work to keep pupils safe and secure is good. Pupils and parents feel confident that pupils are kept safe. The new fence and gates at the school have increased safety at the school and many parents noted these improvements.

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Safety

 Pupils know about different forms of bullying, such as name-calling, physical and cyber-bullying. They said that rare instances of bullying are sorted out, and logs of bullying incidents support this.

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Safety

 Pupils indicated that any derogatory comments in relation to pupils’ race, personality or gender would not be tolerated.

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Safety

 Pupils know how to keep safe; for example, when walking to school, using the internet and in case of a fire.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Good teaching of writing and mathematics, and improvements in the teaching of reading, support the good progress that pupils are now making. Teachers provide pupils with opportunities to write and read a range of texts, and to apply their literacy and numeracy skills across different subjects.  Teachers work effectively to support pupils’ learning. They have high expectations for pupils’ achievement and actively reflect on their own practice in order to improve the skills of the pupils.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Classrooms are well organised with pupils’ work well celebrated and guidance provided on walls for pupils, through reminders about, for example, mathematical vocabulary or grammatical terms.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Areas for improvement identified in the last inspection have been fully acted upon. Pupils are provided with guidance about what they are going to learn and they know what they need to do to be successful.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teachers have sought to improve the achievement of pupils in reading. For example, pupils in Year 6 were presented with challenging texts by Charles Dickens to improve their vocabulary and ability to write interesting story openings. The school is working to encourage reading across the school. One example of this is the names given to classes, which originate from famous authors.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teachers mark work regularly, providing helpful guidance to pupils about how to improve. Comments now focus more effectively on pupils’ technical accuracy and spellings as well as other areas. Pupils act on ‘bubble’ comments written by their teacher so that they show they understand what they need to do to improve.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Where learning is most successful, teachers and other adults very effectively ensure that pupils’ understanding is completely secure and so deepen pupils’ learning. As a result, pupils are moved on at the right time. For example, pupils in Year 5 studying the function of leaves, eagerly shared their discoveries with each other before the teacher questioned them. This helped to ensure pupils’ understanding was completely secure. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes teachers and adults do not ensure that pupils’ understanding is secure before moving them on in their learning.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Most teachers use information about the standards at which pupils are working to set work at the right level. For example, in a Year 3 mathematics lesson, pupils were given problems to solve which were of different levels of challenge. They were therefore able to successfully apply their skills to solve problems, making at least good gains in their learning. However, this is not always the case. There are occasions when, for example, the middle ability pupils and lower ability pupils are given the same task. As a result, learning slows for these pupils because they either find the work too hard or too easy.

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The quality of teaching is good

 As a result of effective training for staff, pupils are now better able to skim and scan texts and to refer to the effectiveness of language in responding to questions on reading texts. Leaders acknowledge that there is still more work to be done in supporting pupils who join the school with weak phonic skills, as these present a barrier to these pupils’ progress.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 The attainment and progress made by Year 6 pupils, including those from White British, Indian and African backgrounds, has improved since the last inspection. Pupils’ attainment last year at the end of Year 6 was above average in writing. It was broadly average in reading and mathematics.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 The progress made by disadvantaged pupils has also improved over the past year. School data indicate that, as disadvantaged pupils move up the school, gaps in attainment close between them and their peers. In 2014, disadvantaged pupils in Year 6 left the school having made good progress across Key Stage 2 in reading, writing and mathematics. Their attainment was in line with pupils nationally in reading and mathematics, and they were slightly ahead of pupils nationally in writing. This means they did markedly better than similar pupils. They were about half a term behind their classmates in writing and mathematics but were half a term ahead of them in reading.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs also make similar progress to their peers over time. By the time they reach Year 6, their progress is generally good. Occasionally, when work in lessons is not at the right level, the progress for these pupils slows.  Pupils who speak English as an additional language make good progress and leave with skills which are ahead of similar pupils nationally.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Although attainment in reading dipped in 2014, current attainment information from the school indicates that pupils in Year 6 are on track to leave with attainment which is above average in reading, writing and mathematics. These pupils joined in Year 3 with attainment which was average so they are on track to have made good progress, over their time at the school.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Last year, the most able Year 6 pupils made much better progress than similar pupils nationally in writing, although their progress was in line with expectations in reading and mathematics. Current school data show that the most able pupils are making good progress. The proportion of Year 6 pupils who are on track to reach the higher levels are set to increase this year. Occasionally, when work in lessons is too easy, the progress for these pupils slows.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Work in books indicates that pupils make good gains in their knowledge and understanding. For example, a pupil in Year 3 at the start of this year was not punctuating sentences accurately and did not present work neatly. However, most recent work shows him using capital letters at the start of sentences, writing at greater length and presenting work neatly.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Pupils clearly enjoy their learning and are proud of their success. For example one Year 4 pupil spoke confidently about the way that he solved two-step problems using multiplication. Another Year 5 pupil spoke about the method she used to explain her answers by referring to evidence and language from a reading text.

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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 115268 Local authority Essex Inspection number 455270

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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 Junior School category Foundation Age range of pupils 7–11 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 235 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Barry Underdown Headteacher Luke Bulpett Date of previous school inspection 2–3 July 2013 Telephone number 01268 520850 Fax number 01268 287602 Email address admin@kingswood-jun.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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