Duxford Church of England Community Primary School

Duxford Church of England Community Primary School St John's Street, Duxford, Cambridge, CB22 4RA

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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 headteacher, leaders and governors have worked well to raise achievement and improve teaching since the last inspection.  The school has a vibrant and stimulating curriculum. An outstanding range of after-school clubs and special events enriches pupils’ learning.  The school promotes pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development well. Its promotion of British values and tolerance for others is good.  Pupils behave well and they feel safe in school. They have good attitudes to learning and enjoy school.  Teaching is good and there is some that is outstanding. Pupils say that their teachers make learning fun.  Pupils’ achievement has improved since the last inspection and standards at the end of Year 6 rose in 2014. The proportion of pupils reaching Level 4 (the nationally expected level) was above average in reading, writing and mathematics.  Provision in the early years is good and children’s

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

attainment at the end of Reception last year was above that of schools nationally.  Results in the Year 1 screening of pupils’ knowledge of the sounds that letters make (phonics) has been well above average for the last two years.

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It is not yet an outstanding school because

 The most able children have not always done as well as they could.  Some younger pupils are not getting as much practice as they need to improve the way they form their letters.  Just occasionally, teachers at Key Stage 2 give less- able pupils written tasks that are too difficult for them.  Although there is some good marking, teachers do not always make clear how pupils could improve their work, particularly in mathematics.

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Information about this inspection

 The inspection team visited 27 lessons across all the classes. In combination with looking at pupils’ books, talking to them about their work and checking their progress over time, this provided a balance of evidence on teaching and learning. An inspector heard some pupils at Key Stage 1 read, and looked at lunchtime and playtime arrangements. An assembly was also observed.  Meetings were held with the headteacher, the deputy headteacher, three teachers with specific responsibilities and the early years teacher, and informal discussions took place with other staff. A meeting took place with the Chair of the Governing Body and three other governors, and a telephone discussion was held with a representative of the local authority.  The inspection team considered the 92 responses to the online survey, Parent View, and took into account a survey conducted by the school and the written views of a small number of parents.

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Information about this inspection

 The inspection team observed the school’s work and looked at a range of documentation. This included the school’s self-evaluation and development plan; records of pupils’ attainment, progress, behaviour and attendance; and systems for protecting and safeguarding pupils.

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Inspection team

Margaret Goodchild, Lead inspector Additional Inspector

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Information about this school

 The school is smaller than the average-sized primary school.  Children in the early years attend full-time.  Most pupils are of White British heritage.  The proportion of disadvantaged pupils eligible for pupil premium funding is below average, at 17%. Pupil premium funding is for pupils in the care of the local authority and those known to be eligible for free school meals.  The proportion of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs is average, at 14%.  The school meets the government’s current floor standards, which set minimum expectations for pupils’ attainment and progress in reading, writing and mathematics.  The school was without a special educational needs coordinator for part of last year but now has an experienced specialist for two days a week.  Duxford Playgroup and the DX Club provide childcare on the school site but as they are not managed by the governing body, they are both subject to separate inspection.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Raise achievement and increase the proportion of pupils who make better than expected progress, by:  always providing enough challenge for the most able pupils  providing more opportunities for younger pupils who need it to practise forming their letters  making sure that written tasks at Key Stage 2 are consistently pitched at the right level for less-able pupils  ensuring that when teachers mark pupils’ books, they inform them about how to improve their work, particularly in mathematics.

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The leadership and management are good

 The headteacher, deputy headteacher, other leaders and the governing body are ambitious for the school. There has been good improvement in the areas for development identified at the last inspection and the school is well placed to improve further. Leaders have established an atmosphere in which teaching can flourish and pupils are expected to behave well.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school is accurate in evaluating its own effectiveness and is identifying the right priorities. The restructuring of the leadership team since the last inspection has increased the involvement of leaders at all levels in school improvement, and teamwork amongst the staff is good.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leaders with responsibility for the basic skills of reading, writing and mathematics, the ‘creative curriculum’, and the key stages are providing good support to the headteacher in improving teaching and raising achievement. The special educational needs coordinator is focused on raising the achievement of disabled pupils and those with special educational needs and is already improving the way the school meets their needs.

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The leadership and management are good

 The leadership of teaching is strong and the school has effective systems for managing teachers’ performance. Senior leaders’ monitoring of teachers’ work identifies what they are doing well and how they could improve. Leaders provide good support for less experienced teachers and staff have good opportunities to improve their effectiveness through training.

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The leadership and management are good

 The headteacher conducts termly meetings to hold teachers to account for pupils’ progress, to check how well they are doing against their targets and to make sure all pupils have equal opportunities. Leaders keep a close check on any possible discrimination and promote positive relationships between pupils well.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school uses its pupil premium funding appropriately to support the pupils for whom it is intended. It has used the funding to employ more teaching assistants to run support groups and one-to-one tuition in literacy and numeracy. It has also used the money to enable eligible pupils to receive support with their homework and to take part in residential visits. It carefully measures the impact of its spending on pupils’ progress.

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The leadership and management are good

 The curriculum promotes pupils’ achievement well and reflects their interests. Due weight is given to literacy and numeracy and in addition pupils study various topics and go on educational visits. An outstanding range of special events and clubs, ranging from Mandarin and chess to sewing and puppet making, does much to enrich and extend pupils’ learning.

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The leadership and management are good

 The promotion of pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is good, and the school promotes British values well. They learn about the principles of democracy and the importance of tolerance and respect. Pupils find out about the different cultures represented in modern British society, for instance, through visiting various places of religion. They hear about other ways of life through visits to the school from people of different cultural backgrounds and help to raise funds for people in other parts of the world.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school makes good use of its primary physical education and sport premium to broaden the sporting opportunities and experiences available to pupils. It has used its funding to enable pupils to take part in after-school sports clubs, tournaments with other schools, and to subsidise swimming for pupils in Years 2 to 6. It has also used it to fund training courses for teachers and membership of the Cambridgeshire school sports partnership.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school has good systems in place for keeping pupils safe. Leaders carry out careful checks on all adults who work with the pupils and make sure staff are regularly trained in safeguarding and child protection. Teachers identify possible risks associated with different activities and the school works effectively with other agencies to safeguard pupils.

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The leadership and management are good

 The local authority has provided effective support for the school, including for the development of literacy and in the early years. It meets regularly with senior leaders to discuss data and to assist in checking the quality of the school’s work.

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The leadership and management are good

 The governance of the school:  The governing body is effective and makes a good contribution to school improvement. Governors are able to talk about what data reveals and are suitably informed about the impact of pupil premium spending. They ask challenging questions of senior leaders and have a good knowledge of the school’s work. They know about the quality of teaching, partly through their own visits to the school, and have a good awareness of the arrangements for managing teachers’ performance. They make sure that the most effective teachers are suitably rewarded and that underperformance is tackled. Governors ensure that the school meets statutory requirements and that its finances are managed well.

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Behaviour

 The behaviour of pupils is good. The school has effective procedures for settling children in when they start school and they quickly learn the routines and what is expected. Pupils say that behaviour is good and most parents agree.

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Behaviour

 In all year groups, pupils have good attitudes to learning and enjoy school. They are very positive about how their teachers make learning fun and they thoroughly enjoy many of the activities provided in lessons. Pupils’ readiness to learn is evident in the attendance rate, which is above average.

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Behaviour

 Pupils concentrate well and in some lessons at Key Stage 2, behaviour is outstanding. In a lesson in Year 6, for example, pupils worked with total concentration as they used laptops to produce information booklets on Europe; in Year 5, they were fascinated and completely absorbed in learning about the parts of flowers.

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Behaviour

 Some younger pupils fidget a little at times when they should be listening and have difficulty waiting their turn to answer the teacher’s questions. There is still some variation in the way pupils present their work but this has improved lately with a push to improve handwriting.

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Safety

 The school’s work to keep pupils safe and secure is good. Pupils say that they feel safe and nearly all parents agree that the school keeps their children secure.

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Safety

 Pupils have a good understanding of how to keep themselves safe. They know the importance of being vigilant when using the internet and were able to talk about cyber-bullying and how to try to avoid it.

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Safety

 Pupils know about other types of bullying and say that there is very little in school. They are confident that any problems would be quickly sorted out by the staff, and records indicate that this is the case.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teaching has improved since the last inspection and is now good, with evidence of some outstanding teaching at Key Stages 1 and 2.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teachers are skilled in using questioning to check pupils’ understanding and to draw out their ideas.

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The quality of teaching is good

 The teaching of reading, writing and mathematics is generally good. Good teaching of phonics from the early years onwards ensures that pupils receive a good grounding in reading and spelling. Practice in writing ‘real’ words and making up ‘alien’ words prepares pupils well for the Year 1 phonics screening. Guided reading sessions with teachers extend pupils’ skills effectively, for instance, in reading with expression and interpreting what they have read.

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The quality of teaching is good

 The school has improved the teaching of writing since the last inspection. Teachers make sure that pupils plan their writing carefully, and have a range of prompts and materials at their disposal when they produce final pieces of written work. There are good opportunities for pupils to practise and develop their writing skills in a range of subjects. Having their targets on cards in their books enables them to transfer their literacy targets to their topic books as a reminder of the next steps in their learning.

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The quality of teaching is good

 To improve the fluency and presentation of pupils’ written work, the school has provided pupils with training in its preferred style of joined handwriting and awards for the neatest handwriting are encouraging pupils to try hard. This is contributing to an increased neatness in pupils’ books, with many pupils at Key Stage 1 as well as Key Stage 2 competently joining their letters. Some younger pupils struggle to form their letters accurately, however, and teachers do not always give them enough practice in correct letter formation.

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The quality of teaching is good

 The school has good procedures for identifying disabled pupils and those with special educational needs. It sets and regularly reviews specific learning targets for them. Teaching assistants provide good, focused support for pupils in lessons and in small groups, developing particular skills. Teaching assistants are very well informed about pupils’ needs and target their questioning well.

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The quality of teaching is good

 In many lessons, teachers provide exactly the right level of challenge for all pupils in the class. This was evident in a science lesson in Year 5 where pupils made outstanding progress learning about the parts of a flower, then each very carefully dissected and labelled one. In a literacy lesson in Year 2, the teacher provided very good challenge to the most able pupils, some of whom assisted him in taking the role of characters in a story.

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The quality of teaching is good

 There are times when work is not as challenging as it could be for the most able pupils, however, and when this happens, their progress slows. Just occasionally, less-able pupils at Key Stage 2 are expected to do work that is too difficult for them and then they struggle to organise their ideas or get many ideas recorded.

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The quality of teaching is good

 The school has concentrated on improving the marking of pupils’ written work, including identifying the next steps in their learning. Pupils have time to reflect on their teachers’ marking each week and respond to it. However, marking does not consistently make clear to pupils what they could do to improve and it is less well developed in mathematics than in English.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Achievement has improved since the last inspection and standards are rising because the school is taking effective action to increase the rate of pupils’ progress. Pupils’ work, school data and lesson observations show that most pupils are making at least the expected progress in all key stages in reading, writing and mathematics.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Children join the early years with attainment that is broadly typical for their age. Their attainment at the end of the Reception year has improved since the last inspection and their progress has been good. In 2014, the proportion of children achieving a good level of development was above average. This was because they nearly all reached the expected level, though only a few exceeded expectations for their age. This was particularly the case in reading, writing and in learning about shape, space and measures in mathematics.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Over the last two years, the school’s results in the Year 1 phonics screening have been well above average, reflecting the good teaching of letters and sounds in the early years and Key Stage 1.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Pupils’ attainment at the end of 2013 in Key Stage 1 was above average, but it dipped to broadly average in 2014 because fewer pupils reached higher levels in reading, writing and mathematics. Nevertheless most of these pupils made at least the expected progress during their time in Key Stage 1 because their attainment was below average on entry. The school predicts that more pupils should reach higher levels at the end of Year 2 this year, based on their progress so far.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Standards at the end of Key Stage 2 rose from below average in 2013 to average overall in 2014. The proportion of pupils reaching Level 4 (the nationally expected level for their age) was above average in reading, writing, mathematics and in English grammar, punctuation and spelling in 2014. Pupils made good progress in reading, with boys and average-attaining pupils doing particularly well. Progress was similar to schools nationally for the proportion of pupils making expected progress in mathematics and writing, but a lower proportion made more than expected progress. Nevertheless, the overall rate of progress at Key Stage 2 in 2014 showed improvement on the previous year.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Over time, the school is successfully narrowing the gap between pupils for whom it receives pupil premium funding and their classmates. A high proportion of disadvantaged pupils made better than expected progress in reading in 2014, and their progress was similar to their classmates in mathematics and writing.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 In 2014, pupils for whom the school received pupil premium funding were two terms behind the rest of the pupils at the end of Key Stage 2 in mathematics, one term behind in reading and four terms behind in writing. Their results were similar to those for disadvantaged pupils nationally except in reading, where they were two terms ahead. Current data show that pupils who receive support through this funding are making good progress.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Currently, the most able pupils are making good progress in the majority of classes and there are instances where their progress is outstanding. In mathematics in Year 2, for example, they were able to subtract in hundreds, taking 407 from 896, then add 1,000 to their answer. In Year 6, a pupil built tension in his writing: ‘A blinding light had appeared in his rear-view mirror. It drew closer and closer, brighter and brighter, becoming more dazzling by the second…’ In their war poems, older pupils expressed themselves imaginatively: ‘War, a game of release the devils; toxic water, infested with deadly diseases. Wild blisters bullying our aching feet, trenches are tenebrous traps. Constant gunfire, a painful hell on earth.’ Occasionally, however, tasks are still not as challenging as they could be for the most able pupils, especially lower down the school.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs did less well than the rest of the pupils at the end of Key Stage 2 in 2014 but they are now making good progress. The leadership of an experienced coordinator this year, extensive training for teaching assistants and regular checks on the impact of support programmes mean that these pupils are now making rapid progress in many lessons.

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The early years provision is good

 Provision in the early years is led and managed well. There are good systems for checking what children can do when they start school. Parents are kept very well informed about what their children are doing at school and how they could help to support their learning at home.

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The early years provision is good

 Children’s achievement has improved since the last inspection and the proportion reaching a good level of development was above average in 2014, continuing an upward trend. The school prepares children well for Key Stage 1.

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The early years provision is good

 The quality of teaching is good and enables children to make good progress in developing their basic skills. The effective teaching of phonics gives children a clear grasp of letter sounds and opportunities to read and spell new words. Some children are beginning to sequence a series of ideas effectively in their writing.

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The early years provision is good

 Skilled questioning is used, as for example in a mathematics session which pushed children to identify how the number of packed lunches compared with the number having school dinner. They were able to count aloud confidently to 20 and staff provided good opportunities for them to sort various objects to make comparisons between different quantities.

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The early years provision is good

 Children behave well and the trusting relationships they have with the staff help them to feel safe. They are enthusiastic learners who pay good attention in lessons, and they have a very good understanding of the daily routines. They are keen to answer questions and respond well to adults’ clear expectations. They play well together and show consideration for one another.  There has been good improvement since the last inspection in the activities staff provide for children. A completely remodelled outdoor area now provides excellent learning opportunities and much enjoyment for the children.

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The early years provision is good

 Occasionally, teachers do not challenge the most able as well as they could to help more children to exceed expectations for their age.

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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 110798 Local authority Cambridgeshire Inspection number 454771

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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 Voluntary controlled Age range of pupils 4–11 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 197 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Clare Delderfield Headteacher Deborah Gould Date of previous school inspection 3 December 2013 Telephone number 01223 712108 Fax number 01223 712109 Email address office@duxford.cambs.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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