Hythe Primary School

School Road, Hythe, Southampton, Hampshire, SO45 6BL

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Overall effectiveness

Previous inspection: Good 2 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 Outstanding 1

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This is a good school

 Leaders and governors constantly look for ways in which to improve the quality of education and pupils’ achievement. Some aspects of the school’s work are already outstanding. The school is well placed to improve further.  The very rigorous and thorough checking systems provide an accurate picture of how well the school is doing. Improvement planning is targeted at remaining weaknesses.  Leaders and governors keep close checks on teaching quality. Effective support for staff ensures teaching and learning are never less than good, and some classroom practice is outstanding.  Exceptionally good programmes of work and outstanding teaching help Reception class children make excellent progress. A much higher proportion than is seen nationally reaches a good level of development by the end of the year.  Progress across Years 1 to 6 is good. Standards in reading, writing and mathematics are above average, and rising. A very large majority of pupils

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This is a good school

reaches the level expected nationally by the end of Year 6.  High quality support for disabled pupils and those with special educational needs promotes their excellent progress. Nearly all reach at least the same levels as their classmates by the end of Year 6.  Pupils’ behaviour is good. Pupils greatly enjoy school. Relationships between pupils and with adults are very strong. Bullying incidents and exclusions are rare.  Very good safeguarding policies and procedures help ensure pupils are kept safe and secure. Pupils’ awareness of how to avoid hazards is good.  The school’s commitment to fostering pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is outstanding. Its very strong promotion of British values, such as fairness and tolerance, helps prepare pupils for life in a global and diverse society exceptionally well.

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It is not yet an outstanding school because

 Pupils’ achievement in writing is sometimes limited by weaker grammar, spelling and punctuation. Not all teachers consistently expect pupils to present their work well.  Teaching is not yet outstanding. Marking of pupils’ work does not always help pupils to improve. Not all teachers keep a close enough check on the rate at which pupils are learning during lessons.

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Information about this inspection

 The inspectors observed pupils’ learning in 12 lessons or parts of lessons. In addition, the inspection team made a number of other short visits to group and individual activities planned to help pupils who have fallen behind. They also heard a sample of pupils read, scrutinised a sample of pupils’ written work and visited some extra-curricular activities.  Meetings were held with pupils, members of the governing body and staff, including senior and middle managers. Inspectors spoke with a representative of the local authority.  The inspectors took account of the 108 responses to the Ofsted on-line questionnaire (Parent View). They also spoke to a small number of parents bringing their children to school.  Responses to 25 staff questionnaires were analysed.  Inspectors observed the school’s work and scrutinised a number of documents including the school’s records on current pupils’ progress, behaviour and attendance. They looked at documents related to

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Inspection team

Diane Wilkinson, Lead inspector Additional Inspector

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Information about this school

 This is a larger than average-size primary school. Most pupils are taught in mixed-age classes.  The proportion of disabled pupils and those with special educational needs is above average.  Almost all pupils are of White British heritage. Very few pupils speak English as an additional language.  The proportion of disadvantaged pupils eligible for the pupil premium funding is below average. This additional funding is to provide extra support for pupils known to be eligible for free school meals and to children who are looked after.  The substantive headteacher left his post in December 2014. Currently, the deputy headteacher is the acting headteacher. A new headteacher will take up post after Easter 2015.  The school meets the government’s floor standard, which sets the minimum expectations for pupils’ attainment and progress in reading, writing and mathematics.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Raise the overall quality of teaching to outstanding through consistently:  ensuring that pupils respond to teachers’ marking and do not make the same errors in future work  ensuring that all teachers keep a close check on the rate at which pupils are learning during lessons, especially when pupils are working by themselves.  Accelerate pupils’ progress, especially in aspects of writing, by:  ensuring that all teachers have high expectations of how pupils present their work  improving pupils’ ability to use correct grammar and punctuation, and spell accurately, in all their written work.

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The leadership and management are good

 Staff and governors continually seek ways to improve the quality of education, and the effective skills of all senior and middle leaders drive forward improvement well. The acting headteacher is a very effective leader; staff and governors are very positive about her leadership. These strengths give the school a good capacity for further improvement.  The school’s success is partly due to the high quality systems and procedures in place to check the effectiveness of its work and pupils’ progress. Information is evaluated well to provide an accurate picture of what still needs to improve. Improvement planning is well targeted at remaining areas of weakness. The success of this is evident in the considerably improved achievement of Reception children, and that of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs, since the previous inspection.  Monitoring of teaching quality by leaders and governors is very regular and thorough. They are clear that

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The leadership and management are good

more needs to be done to achieve their goal of providing outstanding quality education and they are working with determination to achieve this.  Strong procedures for improving teaching quality, including coaching and support from colleagues, ensure that it is at least good and increasingly outstanding.  Formal management of teachers’ performance fully meets government requirements. Regularly monitored targets strongly focus on improving pupils’ achievement. This is backed up by good support for improving teaching quality, the success of which was evident during the inspection.  Rightly judged as a school needing low levels of support by the local authority, leaders and governors make good use of the information from the local authority’s light touch monitoring. Governors benefit considerably from the authority’s governor services to help enhance their expertise.  Very well designed learning programmes for different subjects support pupils’ achievement and their

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The leadership and management are good

commitment to learning. These are adapted especially well to meet recent government requirements. New assessment and target setting procedures support pupils’ learning especially well.  The school’s engagement with parents in supporting their children’s learning is very good. Parents are very supportive of the school and appreciate how well staff support their children.  Rigorous policies and procedures help to ensure that safeguarding fully meets requirements. Pupils are well cared for. Staff and governors are well trained, for example in child protection and the vetting of staff.  The school is strongly committed to providing equality of opportunity, fostering good relationships and discouraging discrimination. Staff and governors monitor this aspect of their work well.  Additional funding is used effectively to support the needs of disadvantaged pupils. It is mainly used to employ additional staff or purchase special resources, and its effectiveness is evident in disadvantaged

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The leadership and management are good

pupils’ commitment to school and their good achievement.  The government primary sport fund grant is used wisely to employ expert teachers who support pupils’ achievement in physical education well. It is also used to improve the skills of other teachers, although improvement in this aspect is not monitored quite as effectively.  The promotion of pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and of British values is outstanding. Pupils have a strong moral awareness. Excellent social development ensures the school is an exceptionally happy place to be; team or paired work in lessons is especially good. Pupils are very aware of the importance of making democratic decisions. Their excellent ability for reflection makes school assemblies highly inspirational occasions.  Cultural development is outstanding. Enhanced through lessons such as religious education, art and music, pupils’ tolerance of, and respect for, a wide range of religions and cultures is excellent. Strengths

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The leadership and management are good

such as these prepare pupils exceptionally well for life in a modern democratic Britain and a global society.  The governance of the school:  Governors fulfil their statutory duties very well, providing a very good balance between their role of holding leaders to account for the quality of education and helping them to bring about improvement. Monitoring carried out by governors is an integral part of the school’s checking processes. This helps to ensure that governors are very well informed about pupils’ progress and teaching quality. Their contribution to the formal procedures for managing teaching performance is very strong as a result. Governors back this up by ensuring that all are well trained in analysing pupil progress data. They are very well placed to agree salary increases for teachers, linked to good performance. Visits to school and assessment information provided by leaders help governors to judge the effect that the additional

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The leadership and management are good

funding for disadvantaged pupils and the sport fund grant have on pupils’ progress.

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Behaviour

 The behaviour of pupils is good.  Pupils have a very good understanding of moral values and an excellent awareness of how they should act towards one other.  During lessons, and moving around the school building, pupils’ behaviour is very strong. There are a few occasions, however, at lunch playtimes when pupils’ over-exuberant behaviour is not checked quickly enough by adults.  The behaviour of pupils who find it difficult to behave well improves exceptionally well over time, due to the excellent support they receive.  Relationships throughout the school are very good. Pupils work and play very happily together as a result.  Pupils’ attitudes to learning are very good. There is a positive learning ethos in which pupils strive to do their best.  Attendance has risen well and is above average as a result.

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Safety

 The school’s work to keep pupils safe and secure is good.  Pupils are well aware of how to keep themselves and others around them safe; although, when letting off steam at playtimes, they do not always remember to follow safety rules. Their understanding of potentially dangerous situations, for example remembering not to divulge personal information on the internet, is very good.  Pupils’ respect for others from different backgrounds, cultures or religions is excellent. The school is a very happy and harmonious place as a result. Pupils are very confident that they are kept safe in school and their parents fully agree.  Bullying in any form is extremely rare.  Pupils are well aware of what extremist behaviour looks like. They show a strong sense of their duty to protect vulnerable minorities.

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The quality of teaching is good

 The consistently good teaching, especially in reading and mathematics, is due to the good management of teaching and learning.  There is a very positive climate for learning in all classrooms. The very best teachers take full advantage of this and encourage pupils to aspire to do their very best. On a few occasions, staff do not check how well pupils are learning when working by themselves and miss the opportunity to raise the level of challenge for those who are learning quickly.  In all classes, lessons are well planned. Good account is taken of the assessment of previous learning, so new activities move pupils on well from the stage they have already reached.  Staff use a well thought out range of teaching methods to help pupils learn. For example, discussions are carried out well to help pupils understand new learning or correct their errors. Pupils become skilled at talking things through or testing out their ideas with each other as a result.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Learning support assistants are well deployed during lessons. Where they support disabled pupils or those with special educational needs, both in lessons and special group activities, these pupils learn exceptionally well, as they do in the activities taught by specialist teachers.  Current targets for literacy and numeracy, introduced to comply with new assessment requirements, are very effective at helping pupils and their teachers to check on the progress being made.  Teachers’ expectations of the way that pupils present their written work is variable, on occasions this leads to pupils’ being careless with their handwriting or making errors in recording. In particular, spelling mistakes are not followed up well enough so pupils continue to make them.  All staff follow the school’s very well thought out marking procedures which show pupils what they have achieved and how they can improve. However, not all staff follow up on pupils’ errors to make sure that

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The quality of teaching is good

pupils know how to correct them and that they do not make the same mistakes in the future.  Expert teaching in subjects such as music or physical education has a positive impact on pupils’ achievement in these subjects.  Homework tasks are well linked to learning in lessons. Parents are very good at ensuring pupils complete these tasks.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Assessment information, scrutiny of pupils’ work and lesson observations show that, overall, pupils’ progress across the school is good. Since the previous inspection the achievement of Reception children has improved very well. They make excellent progress, especially in their personal development and important literacy and numeracy skills.  Attainment in the Year 2 national assessments shows an upward trend since the previous inspection. Standards were significantly above average in the last two years; they are well placed to remain so.  Consistently above average for the previous three years, attainment in the Year 6 national assessments dipped last year, mainly because these pupils joined the school with lower starting points. School assessments, however, indicate that the pupils made good progress.  Inspection evidence shows that pupils currently in Years 3 to 6 achieve standards above those expected

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The achievement of pupils is good

for their age in reading, writing and mathematics. Their good progress helps ensure that attainment is rising and is well on course to reach the above average levels typically achieved by Year 6 pupils.  Attainment in reading is significantly above average at the end of Year 2. Phonics (the sounds letters make in words) is well taught. Results in the Year 1 phonic check are above average. Pupils quickly learn to read unfamiliar words.  Year 2 pupils develop a good understanding of what they read. These skills are built on well, with Year 6 pupils, for example, being able to pick up subtle clues in a text to describe a character’s traits.  By Year 6, the way pupils organise their writing and use language to engage the reader is very good. They have a very good understanding of the different features, for example of newspaper reports, persuasive arguments and diary writing. Pupils’ poetry is of very high quality due to the excellent vocabulary pupils

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The achievement of pupils is good

use.  Some features of writing are less good. Careless handwriting and presentation sometimes spoil pupils’ work. Results in the Year 6 national test for grammar, punctuation and spelling dipped to below average last year. Improving this is a key priority for staff, but some weaknesses still remain, especially in spelling which is not always addressed sufficiently by adults.  Outstanding leadership of the education of disabled pupils and those with special educational needs means that excellent activities support their needs especially well. Their achievement is outstanding and virtually all reach the levels expected for their age by the time they leave.  Disadvantaged pupils achieve well. There is some variation from year to year, due to the changing proportion of pupils with special educational needs in the year group. Typically, the gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and other pupils, both nationally and within the school, has narrowed. By

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The achievement of pupils is good

Year 6, disadvantaged pupils are one term behind their peers in reading, writing and mathematics.  The very small proportion of pupils from minority ethnic backgrounds achieve well. This is also the case for those pupils who speak English as an additional language.  The most able pupils make good progress and attain at the higher levels in national assessments. The proportion of pupils exceeding the levels expected for their age is rising well.  Pupils achieve exceptionally well in music because of the excellent teaching in this subject. They make good progress in physical education, for example in the acquisition of rugby skills.

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The early years provision is outstanding

 Excellent induction procedures help children quickly settle into school, and ensure their outstanding progress from the start. In all areas of learning, a much greater proportion of children than is seen nationally reach a good level of development in communication and language, literature, mathematics and personal, social and emotional development. Children are especially well prepared for the transition to Year 1.  Children quickly become very enthusiastic about learning, are highly inquisitive, and persevere very hard to learn new skills. Moral and social skills are exceptionally well developed; children play and work very happily together in a range of situations. Their safety in all activities is especially well promoted.  The very strong emphasis on oral language, literacy and mathematics skills provides an excellent platform for children’s future learning. Children develop into confident speakers and listen very attentively to adults

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The early years provision is outstanding

and to each other.  Phonics is exceptionally well taught, so children quickly learn to read new words in the books, which they enjoy. Staff very wisely link this with learning the letter patterns children need when writing. By the end of the year, most children produce well written sentences, often writing interestingly and at length.  Mathematically, children gain a very secure understanding of place value, using this very well in simple addition or subtraction tasks. Their understanding of two- and three-dimensional shapes is excellent.  Excellent teamwork and the very regular adjustment of tasks, based on prior assessments of children’s learning, ensure that high quality teaching consistently encourages excellent progress. Staff have very high expectations of what children can achieve; they are especially good at asking questions to draw out children’s understanding. Monitoring of children’s learning is very strong. Staff intuitively know when to

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The early years provision is outstanding

intervene and correct misconceptions, or to move children on when they have achieved a goal.  The Reception classrooms and outdoor area are very well set-up to stimulate children’s learning and support their well-being. An excellent learning ethos is created, so in all activities children constantly challenge themselves to improve or find out new things. A wealth of very well-designed activities help children make excellent progress in a range of areas such as physical development.  The early years leader is a highly skilled practitioner who constantly reflects on the extent to which activities support learning, in order to ensure the quality continually improves.

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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 115916 Local authority Hampshire Inspection number 449749

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School details

This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005.

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School details

Type of school Primary School category Community Age range of pupils 4−11 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 316 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Nicola Hopkins Acting Headteacher Charlotte Peppard Date of previous school inspection 24–25 March 2010 Telephone number 023 80843206 Fax number 023 80849660 Email address adminoffice@hythe.hants.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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