Bredenbury Primary School

Bredenbury Primary School Bredenbury, Bromyard, HR7 4TF

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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 school’s leaders and governors have made significant improvements since its previous inspection, particularly to teaching and pupils’ achievement.  Children make good progress in the early years and are well prepared for Year 1.  Pupils now achieve well in reading, writing and mathematics by the end of Year 6.  Teaching is typically good. Teachers make learning fun and relevant, which captures pupils’ interests and engages them.  Disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs make good progress.  Pupils have positive attitudes to learning and display respect to each other and adults. They behave well, feel safe and enjoy school.  The headteacher’s determination has been crucial in rapidly improving the school. She ensures that any weaknesses in teaching are quickly identified and addressed.  Governors are very knowledgeable about the school’s work and have an accurate understanding of its strengths and weaknesses. They provide

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

strong support but also ask leaders searching questions and hold them to account for making continued improvements.

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It is not yet an outstanding school because

 Teachers’ marking is often detailed but does not always show pupils how to improve their work, and they do not expect pupils to present their work well at all times.  Teachers do not always challenge the most able pupils sufficiently.  Pupils do not have enough opportunities to develop and apply their writing and mathematical skills in other subjects.  Pupils’ awareness and understanding of the multicultural and multi-faith nature of the wider British society are not fully developed.

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Information about this inspection

 The inspector observed pupils’ learning in six lessons, five of which were observed jointly with the headteacher.  The inspector scrutinised a wide range of documents, including systems for checking progress, records relating to behaviour and attendance, safeguarding procedures and the school’s analysis of how well it is doing and how it plans to improve. Records of monitoring of the quality of teaching and the minutes of the governing body meetings were also examined.  The inspector looked at samples of pupils’ work across a range of subjects and classes and listened to pupils read across the school.  Meetings were held with members of the governing body, school staff and groups of pupils. Individual pupils were spoken to in lessons and around the school. The inspector had telephone conversations with a school adviser from the local authority and a national leader from another school who has worked closely

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Information about this inspection

with the school.  Inspectors took account of the views expressed in the 16 responses to Ofsted’s online survey, Parent View, and met with parents at the start of the school day. The inspector also considered the opinions shared through 14 questionnaires returned by members of staff.

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Inspection team

David Evans, Lead inspector Additional Inspector

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Information about this school

 The school is much smaller than the average-sized primary school. Most pupils attend from the village and the surrounding area.  Children in Reception attend full time. They are in a mixed-age class with Years 1 and 2. All older pupils are also taught in mixed-age classes.  The proportion of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs is above the national average.  The proportion of pupils supported by the pupil premium is below that found in most schools. This is additional government funding provided to give extra support to pupils who are known to be eligible for free school meals or in care.  Most pupils are of White British heritage.  The government’s floor standards for pupils’ attainment and progress do not apply to this school because there are not enough pupils in Year 6 each year to qualify.  The school has experienced a period of significant staffing turbulence since the last inspection.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Improve teaching and achievement further by:  ensuring that tasks have the right amount of challenge, especially for the most able  giving pupils direct and specific guidance in marking so that they can rapidly improve their work  ensuring that all teachers have high expectations of how pupils present their work  providing more opportunities for pupils to practise their literacy and mathematical skills in other subjects.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Further develop pupils’ awareness and understanding of the many cultures and faiths that exist in modern Britain and in the wider world.

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The leadership and management are good

 The headteacher has high expectations of all staff and her supportive yet challenging leadership has brought about rapid improvements since the previous inspection. She is a committed and dedicated leader who is valued and admired by the whole school community. Leadership is strengthened by the headteacher’s ongoing drive to improve further and to become an outstanding school. The whole school community is fully committed to this vision.

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The leadership and management are good

 Parents describe a ‘caring’ and ‘inspirational’ headteacher who knows every pupil by name. The 16 responses to Parent View were overwhelmingly positive and nearly all parents say they would recommend the school to others.

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The leadership and management are good

 Strong teamwork among all leaders is effective in bringing about change. They have accurately established together what needs to be done next and have successfully implemented plans to secure improvement. Teaching is better, achievement is now good for all groups of pupils, who continue to behave well, and aspirations to make the school even better are high. Its capacity to improve is good.

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The leadership and management are good

 Subject leaders for English and mathematics take responsibility for improving teaching and checking the progress pupils make in their subjects. They scrutinise pupils’ work in books in order to ensure that school policies are being followed and that pupils’ progress is good. However, the quality of presentation is not always effective in these subjects.

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The leadership and management are good

 Teachers’ performance is managed effectively, with targets that are focused on the school’s priorities to raise standards. Staff, including support staff, know that pay awards are linked to achieving targets they have agreed. They know they will be held to account for the progress their pupils make.

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The leadership and management are good

 The systems used to check pupils’ progress are robust. Leaders, including governors, check individual pupils’ progress closely and initiate appropriate support so that all pupils have timely access to all that the school offers. A number of parents choose the school because it is particularly effective in supporting pupils of different backgrounds. This is a strong testament to the school’s caring approach.

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The leadership and management are good

 All staff work diligently to sustain equal opportunity for all pupils and to ensure pupils’ freedom from discrimination. All pupils, including disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs, also benefit from equally high levels of adult care and attention.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school is implementing new assessments procedures to replace the previous National Curriculum levels. The initial indications are that teachers are applying these procedures well.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school promotes pupils’ spiritual, moral and social development effectively in most respects. Pupils learn about respecting differences and develop a good understanding of British values such as democracy through school and class council elections, and a recent display showing democracy through the ages. However, they do not have sufficient first-hand experiences to develop a full understanding of the diverse cultures and faiths that exist today in other parts of the country.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leaders ensure that funding to support disadvantaged pupils is used to accelerate their learning. These pupils now benefit from extra classes, small support groups, and a continuous focus on developing skills in English and mathematics. Consequently, their progress is accelerating and matching that of other pupils in the school and nationally.

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The leadership and management are good

 Additional primary school sports funding has helped the school to provide a greater range of sporting activities for pupils. This has resulted in higher levels of participation and pupils are accessing more competitive sports tournaments.

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The leadership and management are good

 The local authority offers the school a good level of support. It has provided training for leaders and teachers, for example through visits to schools within the locality to observe and share good practice. It has also given leaders, including governors, a good balance of challenge and support which has helped the school to improve.

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The leadership and management are good

 The school’s arrangements for safeguarding meet requirements. Staff training in how to recognise and act on signs of risk or harm is regular and effective. The headteacher and governors are proactive in ensuring that staff recruited to the school are properly and thoroughly checked. The headteacher is assiduous in following up and dealing with any safeguarding concerns.

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The leadership and management are good

 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 funding for disadvantaged pupils and the sport fund grant have on pupils’ progress. The headteacher,

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The leadership and management are good

senior staff and teachers value the support that governors provide.

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Behaviour

 The behaviour of pupils is good. Pupils are polite and courteous in and around the school. They are enthusiastic in lessons and work well as partners and in larger groups. They are also self-motivated to work on their own when they are not being supported.

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Behaviour

 The large majority of the small number of parents who expressed an opinion said that the school makes sure their children are well behaved.

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Behaviour

 Pupils’ attitudes to school, learning and their work are good and this has a positive impact on their progress. Pupils value education highly and most try their best. Occasionally, when teaching is not interesting or tasks not set at a suitable challenging level, a few sometimes become distracted and less engaged, and so do not achieve as well as they could.

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Behaviour

 Although pupils work hard during lessons, they do not always show enough pride in the way they present their work and often fail to set it out neatly.

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Behaviour

 A good system of nurture and pastoral support is in place. Staff work very closely with parents and, where necessary, outside agencies to support pupils’ emotional, social and behavioural needs.

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Behaviour

 Pupils generally attend regularly and their attendance has improved. It is slightly below average, but in such a small school when a few pupils are ill this can have a significant impact on the overall attendance level. Leaders have taken effective action to improve the attendance of nearly all the children.

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Safety

 The school’s work to keep pupils safe and secure is good. Leaders, including governors, have established effective systems to ensure that pupils are able to enjoy exciting learning opportunities, both within and outside the school, in a safe manner.

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Safety

 All staff and governors have undertaken safeguarding training that is relevant to their roles and responsibilities. Policies are reviewed regularly and effective systems are in place to ensure that appropriate checks are made on all adults who work in the school.

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Safety

 Bullying is not tolerated and leaders deal swiftly and firmly with any incidents that do arise. Assemblies focus on preventing bullying and promoting positive values.

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Safety

 The school ensures that pupils are aware of both the benefits and dangers of internet use. Pupils are taught how to stay safe when using the internet and other digital technology.

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Safety

 Parents spoken to during this inspection, and those who completed the online survey Parent View, said that they feel their children are safe and well looked after at the school.

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The quality of teaching is good

 The work in pupils’ books, observations of learning in lessons and school records indicate that teaching is now good. As a result, all pupils make good progress and standards are rising quickly.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teaching has improved markedly since the last inspection because procedures to check the quality of teaching are effective and senior leaders identify the support and training teachers and teaching assistants need to develop their skills. Teachers are ambitious for their pupils to exceed.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Reading is taught well. All pupils, including the least able, quickly become competent readers. Younger readers who read to the inspector used their knowledge of phonics (the sounds that letters represent) to work out unfamiliar words. Many also read with interest and expression. Older pupils read widely and often. They talked knowledgeably to the inspector about their preferred authors and their favourite books.

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The quality of teaching is good

 The teaching of mathematics is effective. The focus on consistent approaches to develop pupils’ number skills across all classes has resulted in pupils’ greater confidence in working more quickly, accurately and methodically. Teachers show good subject knowledge. Support provided for the least-able pupils helps to ensure that gaps in their learning are closed.

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The quality of teaching is good

 The work provided for pupils is generally well matched to their varying abilities in all classes, challenging them to do well. However, sometimes work set is not hard enough or fails to build on what pupils can already do. This sometimes limits their progress, especially that of the most-able pupils.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Pupils’ books show that teachers mark work regularly and offer some advice for pupils about how to further improve their work. The suggestions are sometimes followed up, but this does not happen enough for pupils to learn from the mistakes that they have made.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teachers’ expectations of the way that pupils present their written work are variable, and on occasions this leads to pupils being careless with their handwriting or making errors in recording.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teaching assistants make a valuable contribution to the quality of teaching and learning. They liaise closely with teachers and provide effective support, usually to small groups or individual pupils. They help to ensure that pupils who require additional support, such as those with special educational needs, learn well and make good progress.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs are supported well by well-trained learning support assistants who work closely with the class teachers to form effective teaching teams. Consequently, these pupils achieve well.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Leaders have worked effectively to improve teaching since the last inspection, and as a result pupils’ progress is accelerating quickly. Expectations of what pupils can achieve are higher despite a large number of staffing changes.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 The relatively small number of pupils in Year 6 each year means that published information on attainment needs to be interpreted with caution. In 2014, one pupil in Year 6 represented 20% of the group. In addition, in 2014 standards were affected by a higher than usual proportion of pupils with complex learning difficulties in Year 6.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 At the end of Key Stage 1, pupils’ attainment in reading, writing and mathematics has been improving over the last three years. Attainment at the end of Key Stage 2 shows a similar pattern in reading and writing.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 The school’s own information for the pupils currently in Year 6 indicates that their attainment is already higher than that seen in previous years. In addition, their progress in English and mathematics is more rapid than that in the previous year. The workbooks of current pupils confirm that the quality of their work has improved and they are making good overall progress. However, throughout the school, pupils do not always have enough opportunities to practise and apply their writing and mathematical skills in other subjects.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Children make good progress in the early years, and by the end of the Reception Year the percentage of children who have achieved a good level of development is above average.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 The sounds letters make are taught well. Results of the national screening check for phonics show the attainment of Year 1 pupils to be above average. Pupils throughout the school use this knowledge and other strategies to build, read and spell unfamiliar words. Pupils regularly practise reading individually or in small groups with an adult. This strong reading culture enables them to make good progress in reading. By Year 6 pupils enjoy reading and do so with fluency and expression. They intelligently discuss favourite authors and books they have read.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 In mathematics, pupils make good progress across the school. They show a secure knowledge and understanding of calculation and mathematical operations. Pupils acquire a clear understanding of mathematical vocabulary. Where learning is most effective, pupils are expected to explain their reasoning and thinking in words or in writing.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs make good progress. This is because their needs and developing skills are checked regularly, and the levels of adult support and learning activities are adjusted to ensure they achieve well. Teachers monitor the progress of these pupils regularly and teaching assistants provide good support in class. They question the pupils skilfully to develop their understanding of difficult ideas.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Due to the small numbers of disadvantaged pupils eligible for the pupil premium, it is not possible to comment on their attainment without risk of identifying individuals. However, close monitoring and work in books indicate that across all year groups, these pupils are progressing at least in line with other pupils, both in school and nationally.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Pupils who join the school partway through the year are made to feel welcome, settle in quickly and achieve well. This is due to teachers making accurate assessments of their abilities and providing effective teaching and high quality care, guidance and support.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 The most-able pupils achieve well, but they are not always challenged sufficiently in their learning to make even swifter progress so that they consistently attain the highest levels in reading, writing and mathematics.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 The school ensures that all pupils are treated equally and that social skills are developed. Pupils listen attentively to teachers and other staff, and are successfully prepared for the next stage of their education. Pupils benefit from regular visits to the local secondary schools for sports and other events.

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The early years provision is good

 Children enter school with skills which are typical for their age overall. The small year groups contribute to fluctuations in starting points each year.

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The early years provision is good

 Teaching in the early years is good. Adults promote early reading skills through improved daily phonics sessions. Children’s active participation helps to develop their enjoyment in learning letters and the sounds they make.

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The early years provision is good

 School assessments show that children make good progress and achieve a good level of development on entry to Year 1. Children settle quickly and are happy at school. They concentrate well during adult-led activities and apply themselves diligently to new learning.  All children make good progress in the Reception Year as a result of the good teaching they receive. The effective leaders are thorough in their marking and assessment and know each child well. Careful records are kept of what children have achieved and this enables adults to plan what the children need to learn next.

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The early years provision is good

 Secure routines across the class ensure that children understand what is expected of them from an early age. They cooperate well with each other and children of all ages within the class get on well together, demonstrating their good behaviour and attitudes towards school. Children are sufficiently confident to try new activities, joining groups of children and sharing their enjoyment together.

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The early years provision is good

 Children learn in a safe environment because adults use effective systems to ensure their well-being, so that children understand how to play safely together.

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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 116654 Local authority Herefordshire Inspection number 462572

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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 55 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Kitty Edwards Headteacher Dawn Wilson Date of previous school inspection 08 May 2013 Telephone number 01885 483253 Fax number 01885 483253 Email address admin@bredenbury.hereford.sch.uk guidance ‘raising concerns and making complaints about Ofsted', which is available from Ofsted’s website: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofsted . 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.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofsted

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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.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofsted

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