Bordesley Green East Nursery School

Bordesley Green East Nursery School 358 Bordesley Green East, East Stuart Road, Birmingham, B33 8QB

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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

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

 The effective leadership of the headteacher has helped create a place where children flourish and blossom, and are given a good start to their education.  Children make good progress from their starting points and achieve well.  The teaching of early reading and mathematics is good, with children learning through play. Children benefit from adults’ good knowledge of how to teach these important aspects during family group time.  Children’s attendance has improved.  Parents are highly supportive of the school and are pleased with the care and help given to their children.  Children respond well to teachers’ high expectations of their behaviour and to the planned activities which capture their imagination and attention.  Children have opportunities to work with professional artists, musicians and photographers. These give them experiences that they would not normally encounter in their daily lives and promote

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

their spiritual, social and cultural development very well.  Effective systems are in place to keep children safe and secure.  Governors play an active role in helping the school to improve further. They regularly check on how well leaders are doing, how well teachers teach and how well children achieve.

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It is not yet an outstanding school because

 While the school makes very good use of checks on attendance data, the detailed records of individual behaviour incidents are not as well used.  Leaders and governors are unaware of the government’s policy of what to do in the event of a child behaving inappropriately.  Other staff with leadership responsibilities do not check often enough on the quality of provision and outcomes in their area.  As identified by the school, teachers do not always make the most of instances when they could be teaching children about the sounds that letters make. Improvements in this area would enable children to get them off to a more rapid start with reading and writing.

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Information about this inspection

 The inspector observed children playing and learning in a range of activities, including those where children were free to choose for themselves and those led by an adult.  The inspector talked with children about their school, and looked at displays and a sample of records of their learning and their work.  The inspector examined a range of documents, including systems for checking children’s progress, records of their behaviour and attendance, records of checks made on the quality of teaching and the minutes of governing body meetings.  The inspector checked the school’s procedures to keep children safe.  Meetings were held with members of the governing body and school staff, and a meeting took place with a representative from the local authority.  The inspector spoke to parents either at the beginning or the end of the school day. She also took account of 10 responses to the online Parent View survey. Questionnaires completed by 14 staff were also

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Inspection team

Jacqueline Wordsworth, Lead inspector Her Majesty’s Inspector

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Information about this school

 Bordersley Green East Nursery School is smaller than most other nursery schools. It shares its site with a children’s centre, which is inspected separately.  Children start at the nursery in the term after their third birthday and stay until transfer to the Reception class in their chosen primary school.  The majority of children attend for either five mornings or five afternoons each week during term time. A small number of children attend on a full-time basis.  The proportion of children from minority ethnic backgrounds is high, the largest group being of Pakistani heritage. A small but increasing proportion of children come from Eastern Europe. Few children are at the early stages of learning to speak English.  No children are entitled for extra funding from the government for those children who are known to eligible for free school meals (pupil premium) because of their age.  At 5%, the proportion of children who are disabled or have special educational needs is average.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Raise children’s attainment by increasing children’s participation in reading activities, including more work on the sounds that letters make.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Improve leadership and management by:  making sure that leaders know and follow the correct processes when preventing a child from attending school because of inappropriate behaviour  making sure the very detailed record of individual behaviour incidents are checked as closely as those kept for attendance  ensuring that the teaching of reading is the very best it can be by checking how often and how well reading is taught and making sure that progress is assessed correctly.

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The leadership and management are good

 The headteacher provides strong and determined leadership. She is ambitious for the nursery’s ongoing success and is effectively able to communicate a very clear vision because of her depth and breadth of experience. Consequently, leaders have maintained effective teaching, good behaviour and good achievement of the children. They are very well placed to make further improvements.

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The leadership and management are good

 The headteacher and staff are a committed team who work effectively together to support the nursery and the wider community through their effective links with the children’s centre that shares the same site.

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The leadership and management are good

 Effective and accurate self-evaluation has enabled the headteacher to maintain the nursery’s strengths and identify improvements needed and to be responsive to the needs of children and parents.

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The leadership and management are good

 Parents feel very welcome at the school and appreciate the detailed information they receive about how their child is doing. Consequently, parents are very pleased with what the nursery has to offer their children. For example, parents are encouraged to come into nursery every day to see how their children are doing.

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The leadership and management are good

 The curriculum is rich and exciting and provides outstanding opportunities for children to pursue their own interests. Considerable thought goes into ensuring that activities will enthuse the children and capture the attention of both boys and girls. For example, opportunities to work with professional artists and musicians develop their creative development exceptionally well.

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The leadership and management are good

 The excellent outdoor area contributes significantly to children’s physical development. It is very well planned and provides several different experiences for children, such as climbing, crawling, hiding and exploring the woodland and nature area, known as ‘Forest School’.

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The leadership and management are good

 Spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is promoted very well. Children have many planned opportunities to develop an awareness of the different cultures found in modern Britain and to help them understand the importance of tolerance, mutual respect and the need to follow rules.

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The leadership and management are good

 The headteacher makes sure there is no discrimination and that children have equal opportunities to succeed. She insists that all those children who need it benefit from additional support or resources so that they are able to make equally good progress as their classmates.

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The leadership and management are good

 Systems to link teachers’ pay with their performance are in place, with targets linked to how well children achieve. Teachers receive good quality support and supervision from the headteacher. She regularly checks their performance. There are many examples where teachers have improved their practice after attending training. For instance, staff are now very alert to any signs showing that children might be at potential risk of exposure to unsuitable views or practices that may cause them to be disrespectful of other people’s religious beliefs.

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The leadership and management are good

 Staff with specific responsibilities do not check often enough on the quality of provision and outcomes in their area. In particular, leaders are aware that the teaching of phonics (linking letters with the sounds they make) would benefit from further work.

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The leadership and management are good

 Safeguarding procedures meet requirements. Checks carried out on the suitability of adults to work with children are carried out and appropriately recorded on the school’s central record. The school maintains high-quality records of links with other services and actions taken to support children who are potentially at risk of harm.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school does not receive support from the local authority as the network of nursery schools in Birmingham carries out this work. However, the support the school received from Birmingham to help them with the risks associated with potential extremism was of very good quality, as shown by the case studies produced by the school.  The governance of the school:  Governance is much improved since the previous inspection. Governors work with the headteacher, regularly checking the nursery’s strengths and areas that need improving. They report their findings to the full governing body. Governors have a good understanding of how well the nursery is doing and how well children achieve. They know the importance of managing teachers’ performance and make sure that training is provided to help them improve. They have used the school’s systems well to ensure that any teaching that is not yet good is tackled. There are a number of parent-governor vacancies on

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The leadership and management are good

the governing body. Governors are redoubling their efforts to ensure that parents are fully represented. Governors have a good knowledge of the risks to children posed by any potential exposure to views that are incompatible with British values. However, they are less well informed about the rules regarding sending children home during the school day; or about some of the most recent changes in the law covering school recruitment processes. Consequently, governors have introduced a training programme to keep themselves informed of the changes.

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Behaviour

 Staff insist on children showing care and consideration to one another and following essential routines. As a result, children have constructive relationships with adults and their classmates. Children share, take turns and help one another because adults expect them to do this and they routinely show children how to manage their behaviour and express their feelings.

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Behaviour

 Children’s behaviour at lunchtime is excellent. Children thoroughly enjoy this time in their day. Adults develop children’s language effectively as they ask them simple questions about the foods they eat. For example, one child was keen to tell staff that she liked broccoli, others then joined in by explaining what their favourite foods were.

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Behaviour

 Children have a good understanding of right and wrong.

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Behaviour

 Good attitudes to learning are evident, with children showing that they can concentrate on one activity for a long period. For example, children spent over 30 minutes very carefully bathing their ‘babies’, taking care not get shampoo or soap in their eyes and making sure that their ‘babies’ were held properly so that they did not fall under the water. They continued their care by making sure the ‘babies’ were dried correctly and kept warm.

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Behaviour

 Children are keen to take responsibility, such as tidying up at the end of morning or afternoon activities, or looking after the tablet computers.

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Behaviour

 Leaders have improved children’s attendance markedly by providing effective support for parents. Good procedures for tracking attendance, punctuality and identifying patterns of absence have also helped to improve how often children attend.

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Behaviour

 Detailed individual behaviour logs help leaders to provide very good support to improve the behaviour of a few children who need it. However, leaders do not collate the information from these detailed individual records to identify trends and patterns of behaviour across the school so that they can provide further support.

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Behaviour

 Parents have been asked to collect their child from school on the rare occasion of an incident of physical aggression. Leaders were unaware that they could neither prevent a child from attending nor ask parents to collect their child early without filling in the required paperwork and informing the local authority. Leaders took immediate action during the inspection to put the matter right.

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Safety

 The school’s work to keep children safe and secure is good.

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Safety

 Practices designed to keep children safe are implemented with rigour. Leaders work effectively with other professionals to keep children safe from harm and to support those families whose circumstances may make them vulnerable.

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Safety

 Records of actions taken to protect children potentially at risk of harm are of a high standard and leaders can clearly demonstrate the impact their work and vigilance has had on children’s safety, care and self- esteem. Systems to keep children safe from risks associated with radicalisation and extremism are effective, demonstrating the impact of good quality training for staff.

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Safety

 Children are taught well how to keep themselves safe from harm. They understand how to ride the wheeled vehicles safely and are aware that they may hurt others if they are not careful. Children understand the importance of washing their hands after going to the toilet or before eating food. Most children can explain who to talk to if they are worried or upset.

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Safety

 Governors are in the process of updating their good knowledge of the most recent changes to the checks required before employing adults in school.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Children enjoy coming to school and are eager to learn. The planned activities are carefully linked to the areas of learning, with good emphasis on developing children’s speaking and listening skills. Children are helped to learn well by adults who act as good role-models, taking all opportunities to play alongside children and developing their language.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Adults use every opportunity to help children count, analyse and identify shapes during activities that children choose for themselves. However, there are occasions when more could be done to help children link letters to the sounds they make.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Children’s imaginative play is well supported. They particularly enjoy ‘dressing up’ and acting out adventures. For example, one boy confidently reported to the inspector that he had put out a very big fire and had saved two people from the burning building, but was sad that he could not save a third. He was engrossed in the game and was able to sequence events and show empathy for the ‘injured’. He also used correct technical vocabulary such as hose and ladder.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teaching of disabled children or those who have special educational needs, particularly, those with behavioural, social and emotional difficulties, is effective in enabling all children to be fully included in the nursery’s activities. Effective support is also provided for those children with language difficulties. Leaders arrange good access to specialist speech and language therapy. Consequently, these children make the same good progress as their classmates.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Children respond well to opportunities to make choices in their learning because of the excellent curriculum on offer. For example, they were able to work with visiting professionals to make conference calls, explore digital media, including photography and film making, and create artefacts out of clay.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Very occasionally, adults do not intervene to provide support or challenge to make sure children’s learning is as good as it can be. For example, the lack of an adult in the book corner held back the possibility for some children to engage in reading. When adults do share books with children their delight and enjoyment is evident and they make good progress.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Effective use of an electronic assessment programme allows adults to keep a careful track on children’s progress. Each child’s ‘Learning Journey’ enables the sharing of children’s learning with their parents. However, the quality of assessments of mastery sometimes varies, particularly in reading.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 The skills and abilities of children when they enter Nursery vary from year to year. This year, more children have entered school with skills typical for their age. All children, whatever their starting points or background, make at least typical progress and most make good progress.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Staff are alert to the needs of children who start school without the skills and knowledge that are typical for their age or, for example, those who struggle to separate from their main carer and have trouble in forming relationships. With effective tailored support from staff, these children catch-up quickly and make good progress in their personal and social and emotional development.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Children who are disabled or have special educational needs make the same good progress as their classmates.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Effective well-tailored support helps those children on entry to school who struggle to manage their feelings and behaviour so that they begin to make good choices about how to get along with others.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Good opportunities for mark-making, drawing and making shapes help children develop effective early writing skills. A few children are able to make letter shapes, using paintbrushes, pens and tablet computers.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Good physical development is encouraged through regular opportunities to play and climb in the excellently equipped outdoor area. Here they learn to play together, share and take turns using the play equipment. Effective use of the outdoors enables children to play imaginatively. For example, children were actively engaged in building a police station, complete with ‘jail’ and then went around the area ‘arresting’ each other, giving clear reasons for the ‘culprits’ visit to the police station.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Challenging tasks and activities help the most-able children do as well as they can. Most make more than typical progress in communication and language, and in their mathematical development and in solving problems. For example, children can already count to 10 with most beginning to recognise numbers and shapes. Some are able to understand what the number 10 represents and can match 10 objects to the numeral. Some children struggle with counting backwards from 10 but relish the challenge of doing so.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Children’s creative development is excellent. For example, children were only given red, yellow and blue paint and were asked if they could still paint a picture of a tree. After some experimentation and careful questioning by adults children were able to explain how to make the colour green by mixing yellow and blue, and brown by mixing green with red.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Children develop an interest in reading. Most children are happy to listen to stories and handle books with care. The most able are at the early stages of linking the letters of the alphabet with the sounds they make and make typical progress in this important skill. However, there are not always enough opportunities provided throughout the day to allow children to make the rapid progress of which they are capable.

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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 103120 Local authority Birmingham Inspection number 449512

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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 Nursery School category Community Age range of pupils 3–5 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 105 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Chris Wilson Headteacher Mrs Alison Starling Date of previous school inspection 21 March 2012 Telephone number 0121 783 2138 Fax number 0121 783 2138 Email address enquiry@bgens.bham.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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