Shelton Junior School

Shelton Junior School Carlton Avenue, Shelton Lock, Derby, DE24 9EJ

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Overall effectiveness

Previous inspection: Inadequate 4 This inspection: Requires improvement 3 Leadership and management Good 2 Behaviour and safety of pupils Good 2 Quality of teaching Requires improvement 3 Achievement of pupils Requires improvement 3

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

 In the results of the most-recent national tests, pupils made less progress than might have been expected in relation to their starting points.  The quality of teaching has not been good enough consistently to eradicate the legacy of underachievement at the school.  Teachers do not always expect the highest standards of English from the pupils during classroom discussions.  The feedback the teachers give to pupils verbally during lessons does not consistently provide them with clear guidance.  The work provided for pupils does not always take enough account of their prior learning, particularly for the more-able pupils, so that their rate of learning is slower than it could be.  The school’s improvement and action plans and leaders’ analyses of information about some aspects of the school’s work do not contain enough information to enable leaders and managers and the governing body to check that the school is

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

making progress quickly enough and whether the progress made by different groups is good enough.

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The school has the following strengths

 The headteacher exhibits drive, determination, and high expectations for the school. She has developed a committed and cohesive staff team which is working together effectively and securing essential improvements quickly.  Pupils’ achievement and the quality of teaching have improved as a result of determined leadership and management.  Pupils behave well. They enjoy being at school and are keen to learn. This is a direct result of the culture and the curriculum that the staff have established at the school.  The relationships between the pupils and with the staff are good.  Pupils are looked after well. They feel safe at the school. Parents are highly satisfied with the level of care provided.

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Information about this inspection

 The inspectors observed 15 lessons, including some jointly with senior leaders. They carried out other short visits to classrooms to check on pupils’ work and behaviour. They listened to pupils reading and scrutinised examples of their work.  The inspectors held meetings with leaders and managers, other members of staff and members of the governing body. They spoke with a representative of the local authority. They analysed questionnaires completed by members of staff as part of a survey carried out by the school. They spoke with many pupils, in groups, in lessons, and around the school.  The inspectors spoke with parents at the beginning of the school day and took account of a recent survey undertaken by the school, to which 38 parents responded. They looked also at comments written by parents, collected by the school at recent events. They checked the online Parent View survey but there were not sufficient responses for any analysis.

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Information about this inspection

 The inspectors looked at a range of documentation, including the school’s development and action plans, policies, records relating to the support provided by the school to individual pupils, records relating to pupils’ behaviour, the school’s information on pupils’ achievement and attendance, safeguarding records, and records kept by the governing body.

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Inspection team

Clive Moss, Lead inspector Her Majesty’s Inspector

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Full report

In accordance with section 13 (4) of the Education Act 2005, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector is of the opinion that the school no longer requires special measures.

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Information about this school

 The school was judged to require special measures at its previous inspection in February 2013. Since then, there has been significant change in the senior leadership and governance of the school. The current headteacher took up the substantive post in April 2014.  The school is similar in size to the average primary school.  Most pupils are White British. The proportion of pupils from minority ethnic groups is less than half the national average  At around 15%, the proportion of disabled pupils and those with special educational needs is broadly average.  The proportion of pupils eligible for the pupil premium (additional funding from the government for pupils known to be eligible for free school meals or who are looked after) is above average, at around 40%  The school meets the government’s current floor standards, which set the minimum requirements for pupils’ attainment and progress in reading, writing and mathematics by the end of Year 6.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Improve the quality of teaching and pupils’ achievement by:  developing the pupils’ use of spoken language as effectively as their writing  during lessons, providing pupils with more-specific verbal guidance about what they have done well, any errors they have made, and how they can correct them  ensuring that all work set provides pupils with sufficient challenge, particularly for the more able, by taking full account of their prior learning  sustaining the levels of good teaching achieved recently so that differences in the progress made by different groups continue to reduce.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Increase the impact of leadership and management by:  ensuring improvement and action plans contain all of the information needed to enable rigorous analysis and evaluation of the school’s progress  evaluating the impact on pupils of the particular ways in which additional sources of funding are used, particularly the pupil premium and sports funding  analysing the impact of all aspects of the school’s work for different groups of pupils as thoroughly as their academic achievement.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leaders and managers, at all levels in the school, demonstrate enthusiasm, ambition, drive, and a determination to improve the school. In particular, that drive and determination is personified by the headteacher. She has established high expectations, ensured that there is a relentless focus on improving the quality of teaching, and secured the commitment of the whole staff. This has brought rapid improvements in teaching and so the pupils’ achievement has improved also.

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The leadership and management are good

 Thorough monitoring of the quality of teaching and the achievement of the pupils is linked closely with rigorous management of the staff’s performance and extensive and carefully planned professional development. This process has been a cornerstone of and driving force for the improvements evident at the school.

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The leadership and management are good

 The staff ensure that the school is a harmonious community in which pupils from all of the different backgrounds represented get on well together. For example, pupils who have joined the school recently described to inspectors how easy it had been to settle in. They explained that this was because people are so friendly and respectful towards each other.

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The leadership and management are good

 The curriculum has been constructed thoughtfully and carefully. It enables the pupils not only to focus on developing the key skills of literacy and numeracy, but also to benefit from a broad range of lessons, activities and opportunities that both capture their interest and help them to develop positive attitudes to learning and life. These include an appreciation of fundamental values that underpin British society. Among the many notable examples that struck the inspectors were topic work looking at how the school’s budget is used and lessons in which the pupils had agreed as a class, through discussion and by taking a vote, particular pieces of learning on which they needed to focus.

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The leadership and management are good

 Members of staff with responsibilities for subjects and other aspects of the school’s work are playing a full part in the work to improve the school. The effectiveness of what they do can be seen in the improvements in the quality of teaching and in pupils’ achievement.

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The leadership and management are good

 The action plans drawn up by leaders and managers, including those prepared by senior leaders, set out the school’s ambitions and priorities well. However, the plans lack some important information and detail required to make sure that leaders, managers and the governing body can readily check how well the plans are being put into practice and whether the actions taken are making enough difference.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leaders and managers have used the pupil premium funding in a variety of appropriate and sometimes innovative ways that are helping to improve the achievement of disadvantaged pupils, including by involving parents in their children’s learning. Leaders do not currently evaluate the impact of this work as rigorously as they could and so do not have a full understanding of how much difference has been made by each of the things on which they have spent the funding.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leaders, managers, and the teachers analyse carefully how well different groups are achieving and take suitable action to tackle underachievement, particularly for the pupils eligible for the pupil premium and disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs. They are not as rigorous in checking that all of the different groups represented at the school benefit equally from other things that the school does; for example, in how the behaviour management policy works and which pupils are participating in the full range of opportunities provided by the curriculum.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school has used the additional government funding for physical education and sport sensibly to provide more opportunities for the pupils to take part in sport and to improve the quality of the teaching of physical education. Leaders and governors have not analysed or evaluated rigorously enough the impact of what the school has done, including, for example, by looking at whether all groups of pupils are benefiting as much as they could.

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The leadership and management are good

 Safeguarding arrangements meet current requirements. The staff understand what is required of them in the school’s policies, which are kept up to date and have been revised in light of recent guidance from the government. Arrangements are in place to provide updated training for the staff imminently.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school has received and responded well to an appropriate level and range of support from the local authority. The support has been effective in helping the school to make the necessary improvements that have resulted in special measures being removed at this inspection.

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The leadership and management are good

 The governance of the school:  The governing body is well organised and increasingly active in checking how well the school is doing. It has accurate information about the quality of teaching, some of which it gathers for itself, and about the achievement of the pupils. It is implementing purposefully the outcomes from an external review of governance. Members of the governing body undertake training to make sure that they have the necessary skills; for example, in understanding data about the pupils’ achievement.  The governing body exercises appropriate oversight of the school’s performance management policy and has ensured that it is carried out rigorously so that underperformance is tackled and that teachers’ pay and salary progression are linked to evidence of good performance.  The governing body is not sufficiently rigorous in its evaluation of how well the school is doing, which makes it less influential than it could be in challenging the school and contributing to the school’s

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Behaviour

 The behaviour of pupils is good. Pupils are typically well behaved in lessons and around school at all times of the day.

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Behaviour

 The pupils enjoy being at the school and consistently display positive attitudes to learning which stand them in good stead for the next stage of their education. They are keen to do well and they take pride in their work. They respond very promptly to the staff’s instructions, both in lessons and around the school.

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Behaviour

 Pupils from the variety of different backgrounds represented at the school learn and play together well. Pupils from all backgrounds told the inspectors that they do not hear racist or homophobic language being used at school.

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Behaviour

 The school’s behaviour policy is operated consistently by the staff and, as a result, there is little disruption to lessons and few instances of misbehaviour. There are few instances of pupils being excluded from the school for serious misbehaviour.

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Behaviour

 Neither parents, nor the staff raised any concerns with the inspectors about the pupils’ behaviour. The pupils are generally considerate of and respectful towards others, both pupils and adults. Very occasionally, however, a few pupils are a little too boisterous when playing outdoors during morning break.

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Safety

 The school’s work to keep pupils safe and secure is good. The pupils say that they feel safe at the school.

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Safety

 Parents told inspectors that that their children are looked after well, and similar views were expressed in written surveys of parents’ views carried out by the school. Relationships between pupils and the staff are strong.

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Safety

 The school’s strategies to improve attendance have been successful. Attendance is currently above average.

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Safety

 Pupils have a good understanding of a range of different types of risks and how to stay safe, as a result of a broad range of lessons and other learning opportunities provided in the school’s curriculum. They understand, for example, how to stay safe when using the internet and they know about fire safety.  The pupils understand about the different forms that bullying can take, and they say that bullying is very rare at the school. The staff act quickly and efficiently to tackle any occurrence.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 The teaching has not resulted in sustained and consistently good rates of progress for all pupils. In lessons, the work provided initially for the pupils does not always take enough account of what they already know, understand and can do. This slows the rate of learning, particularly for more-able pupils.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Teachers do not provide the pupils with sufficiently clear feedback during lessons about the quality of the answers the pupils give to the teachers’ questions. As a result, pupils are not always clear about what specifically was good about their answers, or what mistakes they have made and how they can be corrected.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Teachers do not develop the pupils’ speaking skills systematically in lessons. They do not routinely demand full answers, or grammatically accurate modes of expression. As a result, the pupils are not always encouraged to think deeply and the extent of their learning about the formal aspects of language is restricted.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 The quality of teaching has improved considerably since the previous inspection and is no longer inadequate. A much higher proportion of good teaching is now evident, but has not been sustained for long enough to secure consistently good progress by the pupils.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Typically, the pupils show interest in lessons and get on well with the work they are given. The inspectors saw examples of lessons in which the pupils were given the opportunity to take the initiative in what they learned. This had a very positive impact on the pupils’ motivation. For example, in one lesson about aspects of grammar, the pupils worked avidly, with well-judged interventions and support from the teacher, on a specific piece of learning chosen by them that would not, on the surface, appear so interesting, but which they were determined to get right; and they did.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 The teachers plan carefully structured lessons which enable the work to proceed smoothly. Careful attention is paid to the specific learning needs of different groups of pupils, particularly those eligible for the pupil premium and disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs. The work is not always sufficiently challenging for the more-able pupils, however, and the extent to which they learn is limited sometimes when they are expected to start unnecessarily with the same task as other pupils.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Teaching assistants are deployed well and they make a valuable contribution to the progress of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 The quality of marking is better than the feedback given to the pupils during lessons. The school’s policy on marking is used consistently by the staff. The marking provides the pupils with clear information about what they have learned well and what they need to improve.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 The quality of pupils’ writing has improved markedly as a result of effective teaching. The teachers place considerable emphasis on writing, both in terms of content and actual handwriting. High standards are expected, including in subjects such as science. As a result, pupils’ results in national tests improved significantly in 2014.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Effective work to involve parents, including some that find it more difficult than others to be involved with the school, has helped to raise the profile of writing with the pupils. For example, quite a few fathers provided examples of their own writing, which is on high-profile display at the school.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Reading is promoted well, including through activities that help parents to support their children’s reading. The pupils express interest in reading and do so routinely out of school, including those who find reading more difficult than others. Pupils who experience difficulty with reading are supported well and their progress is increasing.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Better teaching has also enabled a larger proportion of pupils to make good progress in mathematics.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Results in national tests for Year 6 in 2014 were better than at the time of the last inspection. Overall, the pupils’ attainment was broadly average and not significantly below, for the first time since 2010.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Overall, the pupils in Year 6 made less progress than might have been expected given their starting points. Data held by the school, scrutiny of the pupils’ books, and observations in lessons indicate that the pupils’ achievement currently is improving, most evidently in the younger year groups. The pupils are making faster progress than previously, particularly in literacy, and this is gradually eradicating a legacy of past underachievement. This improvement is recognised by pupils and their parents.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 In 2014, the proportion of disadvantaged pupils in Year 6 making at least the levels of progress expected was lower than for other pupils nationally in reading, writing, and mathematics. The difference between the attainment of the Year 6 pupils who were eligible for the pupil premium and the average for all pupils nationally amounted to the pupils at the school being about two and a half terms behind. That difference was less in 2014, however, than it was at the time of the last inspection.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 The difference between disadvantaged pupils and others at the school means that the disadvantaged pupils were about three terms behind their peers. The school data show that, currently, that difference is also reducing, though not consistently in all subjects and all classes.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 The proportions of pupils at the school reaching the higher levels in the national tests increased in 2014 faster than nationally. Of those pupils who entered the school with higher levels of prior attainment, the proportions reaching Level 5 or better were a little below average in mathematics and reading, but average in writing and in English grammar, punctuation and spelling.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 The achievement of disabled pupils and those with special educational needs is similar to that of other pupils at the school. Here also, evidence from the school’s data, the pupils’ work, and observations in lessons indicate that these pupils’ progress is improving and that differences between their achievement and that of others at the school are now reducing.

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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 112983 Local authority Derby Inspection number 447439

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School details

This inspection was carried out under section 8 of the Education Act 2005. The inspection was also deemed a section 5 inspection under the same Act.

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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 268 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Leanne Powell Headteacher Tracie Riley Date of previous school inspection 6 February 2013 Telephone number 01332 701212 Fax number 01332 701212 Email address admin@sheltonj.derby.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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