Leicester Preparatory School

School report/Leicester Preparatory School 29 April–1 May 2015 Leicester Preparatory School 2 Albert Road, Stoneygate, Leicester, LE2 2AA

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Overall effectiveness 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 because

 The headteacher has a strong vision for the school and has ensured that good standards of achievement have been maintained over time.  The proprietor provides good support to the school. He makes sure that independent school regulations are met, including safeguarding.  Older pupils are able to benefit from a broad range of subjects, including French, Mandarin, Latin, drama, squash, piano, guitar and flute which motivate them to learn.  Pupils are happy in school. Their health and welfare is monitored very well and they thrive in the caring environment.  Each pupil’s learning needs are known very well and teachers ensure that children at all stages are given individual support and guidance.  Teachers mark pupils’ work regularly and give them valuable advice on how to improve.  Pupils throughout the school make good progress in English and mathematics, with most achieving high standards.  Pupils in Years 5 and 6 are prepared well for the

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This is a good school because

next stage of their education.  Parents receive reports about their children’s progress every two weeks. They value highly the school’s consistent approach to reporting on pupils’ learning.  Leadership of the early years is very good. The leader oversees teaching that actively engages all children.  Children in early years make outstanding progress. Teachers check each child’s social and emotional development on a daily basis and the children enjoy stimulating learning tasks.  Children in early years with special educational needs or disabilities are given very good individual support.

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It is not yet an outstanding school because

 Leaders and managers have a good understanding of the school’s strengths and weaknesses, but this is not yet set out in a comprehensive improvement plan.  Teaching does not always make full use of assessment information to ensure that activities engage all pupils in their learning.  Some of the most-able pupils are not challenged consistently across all subjects.  Pupils do not always respond to teacher’s marking to correct their work and improve their knowledge and understanding.

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Compliance with regulatory requirements

 The school meets the schedule to The Education (Independent School Standards) (England) Regulations 2014 and associated requirements.

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Information about this inspection

 The inspection was carried out with one day’s notice.  The inspector observed learning in eleven lessons, covering all classes, including the early years provision.  Discussions took place with the headteacher, the proprietor, the leader for the early years, staff, and pupils.  Pupils’ work was examined during lessons and a more-detailed scrutiny was made of a sample of written work. Pupils read to the inspector and she spoke with pupils throughout the inspection, in order to gather their views.  The inspector examined a range of school documentation including; policies and records about how the school was keeping pupils safe, information about pupils’ behaviour and their learning, progress and achievement; and the school’s evaluation of its strengths and its priorities for improvement. She looked also at teachers’ performance management reviews.  Twenty responses to the Parent View, Ofsted’s online questionnaire, were considered, together with

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Information about this inspection

sixteen staff questionnaires, which had also been returned. Discussions were held with parents as they collected, or dropped off their children. The inspector met, by request, with a parent also.

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Inspection team

Sheila Crew, Lead inspector Additional Inspector

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Information about this school

 Leicester Preparatory School is a co-educational, non-selective and non-denominational independent day school, which was first established in 1886. It is located in the south of the city of Leicester and was previously called Stoneygate College. The school changed its name to Leicester Preparatory School in September 2011.  Leicester Preparatory School is privately owned by a proprietor. The proprietor is a major shareholder in Consortium Leicester Ltd., which is a separate company from the school. Other shareholders are parents, staff, ex-parents and friends, who formed the consortium in August 2013 to buy the school building .  The present headmaster was appointed in June 2012.  The school admits girls and boys from aged three to 11 years.  Pupils come from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds that reflect those of the local area. The proportion speaking English as an additional language is in line with the national average.

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Information about this school

 The school is registered for 150 pupils and there are currently 55 pupils on roll. Primary school classes are combined in year groups. The headteacher is also the full-time teacher for Years 5 and 6, with two further teachers taking Years 3 and 4 and Years 1 and 2.  Just over half of the school’s pupils are in the early years. Twenty six pupils are funded through the government scheme for nursery education. Children in the early years are taught in the Nursery and Reception classes.  There are no pupils with statements of special educational needs or an education, health and care plan. The proportion of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs is below average.  The school uses local squash courts and other local amenities including Evington swimming pool, Leicester University Athletics Tracks, tennis courts and local football pitches .  The school was inspected previously in March 2012.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Improve progress and achievement further by:- ensuring that teachers use assessment information effectively to plan activities for different groups of pupils to enable them to engage in their learning raising the quality of teaching to challenge the most-able pupils consistently across all subjects ensuring that pupils correct their work to improve their knowledge and understanding.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Strengthen leadership and management by:- developing a systematic method to record identified strengths and areas for improvement evaluating actions to improve aspects of the school on a regular basis in a school improvement plan.

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The leadership and management are good

 The headteacher has a strong vision for the school and has ensured that good standards of achievement have been maintained over time.

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The leadership and management are good

 Leadership is shared with other members of staff, including the head of early years and the teacher with responsibility for safeguarding pupils. Together, they have established an ethos that encourages and supports good behaviour, attitudes and learning. The school promotes equality of opportunity and fosters good relations well. Incidents of discrimination are extremely rare and dealt with very effectively.

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The leadership and management are good

 Safeguarding arrangements meet all statutory regulation effectively. The school works closely with Leicester Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) to ensure pupils are safe. The school’s safeguarding policy is up to date and was published on its website, as required, at the time of the inspection.

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The leadership and management are good

 The headteacher has taken very effective action to put into place recommendations from the last inspection to improve the tracking of pupil progress from Year 1 to Year 6. He has introduced an online lesson planning and assessment system, which requires all teachers to enter comments and grades for each pupil on a weekly basis. He checks the learning of all pupils and ensures that prompt action is taken, if there are indications that a child is not achieving expected progress.

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The leadership and management are good

 The headteacher has ensured that a broad and balanced curriculum is in place and there is a keen focus on academic achievement in the older years. There is a strong focus on communication, literacy and numeracy. Pupils have opportunities to experience subjects such as French, Mandarin, Latin, drama, squash, swimming and piano, which motivate them to learn.

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The leadership and management are good

 Pupils are offered a broad range of extra-curricular activities, including drama productions, classical concerts, word quizzes, orienteering competitions, trips to France, Donnington le Heath, Bosworth, and a recent Easter Egg competition. They have also taken part in fund-raising activities to purchase a water buffalo for a village in India.

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The leadership and management are good

 The social, moral, spiritual and cultural curriculum promotes a good understanding of British values and culture through topic work. Older pupils have valuable information also through assemblies on rights and responsibilities such as the importance of democracy, the work of Childline and The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).

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The leadership and management are good

 Leadership is not yet outstanding because, although leaders have a sound understanding of the school’s strengths and weaknesses, they have not developed a clear improvement plan which puts in place systems to evaluate the quality of teaching regularly across the whole school and to identify areas for improvement.

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The leadership and management are good

 Parents are overwhelmingly supportive of the school leadership. They value highly the fortnightly reports on their children’s progress and results from Parent View show that all the respondents would recommend the school to other parents.

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The leadership and management are good

 The governance of the school: The proprietor and the school leadership team have ensured that all of the requirements regarding keeping children safe are met. All the checks have been carried out on the premises, training is up-to- date and staff have a good understanding about safeguarding requirements. The proprietor and school leaders have undergone safer recruitment training and have been vigilant in carrying out checks on the suitability of staff in the school. The proprietor has a good understanding of the strengths and areas for improvement in the school. He knows about the quality of teaching in the school and uses information on the school’s performance to ask appropriate questions of the headteacher. An area identified for improvement is the introduction of a system to link the headteacher’s targets to a whole school improvement plan. The proprietor and headteacher ensure that finances are monitored closely. This ensures that the

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The leadership and management are good

resources made available to the school are managed efficiently. The proprietor and headteacher together ensure that all the independent school standards are met.

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Behaviour

 Pupils are happy in school and behaviour in lessons is good. They enjoy learning and have particularly warm relationships with teachers that help them to make good progress in lessons.

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Behaviour

 Teachers demonstrate good care for pupils’ well-being throughout the school. Values such as kindness, respect and friendship are promoted on classroom walls and older pupils show affection for the younger children.

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Behaviour

 The school maintains detailed records of the very few behaviour incidents that happen. All staff know each pupil extremely well and so are able to provide the guidance needed to resolve any issues, when they occur.

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Behaviour

 Behaviour is not outstanding because, although pupils behave very well in lessons, they do not always display a love of learning and enthusiasm to investigate ideas further by themselves.

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Behaviour

 Pupils’ personal and social development is very well developed, particularly in the early years where teachers encourage children to share and play together well.

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Behaviour

 Parents believe behaviour is very good: for example, one parent stated ‘My son loves going to school and I have noticed a significant difference in his behaviour in just a few weeks.’

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Safety

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

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Safety

 The school’s arrangements for safeguarding pupils meet requirements and pupils’ welfare, health and safety is monitored very carefully. All pupils are provided with a hot meal every day and staff supervise lunch and play times very well.

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Safety

 Incident logs record the very few occasions when any unkindness, or bullying has occurred. They show that staff deal with them immediately. The focus is always on creating a secure school environment in which pupils are encouraged to flourish.

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Safety

 Parents say that the school keeps their children safe from any harm. Records show that the school takes decisive action to communicate with parents, if they have any concerns.

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Safety

 All staff are routinely trained in safeguarding procedures and they are able to discuss their good understanding of how to keep pupils safe. There are ‘Childline’ posters around the school and pupils are confident that they know they can talk to someone, if they have any fears.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teaching is well planned and enables pupils to make good progress from their different starting points and achieve well over time.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teaching for children in the early years is outstanding.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Reading and writing are taught skilfully throughout the school. Teachers ensure that pupils understand how to structure their stories and give them a range of writing tasks. Pupils are taught how to read and interpret meanings well and many are confident, independent readers at early ages.  The introduction of the English Speaking Board (ESB) syllabus in the school means that all pupils in Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 have been awarded merits, or better for their oral presentations, such as describing how to assemble the parts of a flute and then play a tune. The pupils are encouraged to speak to parent audiences in assemblies and awards note their increased confidence in both speaking and listening.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Mathematics and numeracy are taught well. Pupils are challenged to reason, solve problems, and present solutions. The work in their books is neat and a very high percentage is accurate.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Assessment is a strength of the school. Teachers mark pupils’ work regularly and give the pupils valuable advice on how to improve. Pupils are given weekly spelling and mental mathematics tests throughout the school and they are shown how to correct any mistakes consistently.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Each pupil’s learning needs are known very well and teachers ensure that children at all stages are given individual support and guidance. The small numbers in classes mean that all pupils can ask for help and receive one-to-one support from teachers, who make sure that pupils understand how to make their work even better.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Years 5 and 6 pupils are prepared well for the next stage of their education. They are articulate and their detailed written work reveals very good progress from their starting points. Practical activities in science engage pupils and they are able to reflect on experiments and to predict outcomes.

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The quality of teaching is good

 Teaching is not outstanding because teachers do not make full use of the school’s assessment information to ensure that activities are neither too easy, nor too difficult for all pupils to be actively engaged in their learning. Teachers do not always ensure that pupils respond to their good marking to correct their mistakes and therefore improve their knowledge and understanding.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 All groups of pupils throughout the school make good progress in English and mathematics, with most achieving high standards. They are supported well in those subjects because literacy, numeracy, writing, reading, speaking, and listening are consistently monitored for each child. Their work shows that they can write both creatively and persuasively and can put forward well-reasoned arguments.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 English and mathematics workbooks enable all pupils to work at their own pace and level. Teachers of older pupils encourage them to think for themselves through probing questions on quite complex tasks, such as using algebraic formulae to calculate solutions. Verbal and non-verbal reasoning tests reinforce progress over time by measuring pupils’ ability to express their good understanding of ideas and concepts.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 By the time they reach Years 5 and 6, pupils have made good progress in a range of subjects. Languages such as French, Latin and Mandarin provide them with opportunities to explore quite difficult learning and pupils respond well to these challenges.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Pupils in Year 6 achieve better than expected progress from their starting points. Most go on to achieve high pass rates in the 11+ examinations for local grammar schools.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs are supported well and achieve well. The pupils who speak English as an additional language are given specific one-to-one support throughout the school and they make good progress overall.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Achievement is not outstanding because a small number of the most-able pupils is not challenged consistently to achieve their full potential across all subjects. That is partly because groups are expected to cover the same topic together and sometimes the most-able pupils have to wait to move on.

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The achievement of pupils is good

 Parents believe that their children achieve well and make good progress. One parent commented: ‘The most important thing for me is that my son has lots of one to one time with the teachers. His teachers take time out to speak to me and let me know of his progress.’

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The early years provision is outstanding

 The leadership and management of the early years is outstanding. The leader monitors all areas of learning regularly and ensures that all children are given a rich, varied and imaginative range of experiences. She is very proactive in checking the quality of teaching and provides detailed written feedback to teachers on points for development.

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The early years provision is outstanding

 Training and development of staff is a high focus. Two teachers have completed the qualification for early years provision for disabled children and those who have special educational needs. Those children are given individual programmes of speech and language therapy and key personnel support them very well.

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The early years provision is outstanding

 Children in the early years make outstanding progress from their starting points. They make excellent progress in all areas of their learning. By the time children are ready to join Year 1 the proportion attaining a good level of development is higher than found nationally.

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The early years provision is outstanding

 Teachers check each child’s personal, social and emotional development on a daily basis and the children’s days are full of exciting opportunities to learn. The topic of mini-beasts was evident during the inspection and children were able to explore all aspects, including drawing, colouring, writing, and telling stories, as well as active play with water and soil. Children in the Nursery demonstrate very good spoken language and some can write their names.

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The early years provision is outstanding

 Children in Reception make very good progress in developing writing and number skills. Some children are able to write stories comprised of several sentences. Phonics are used very well to support children in sounding out words. Children’s skills exceed the expectations for their age across all areas of learning.

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The early years provision is outstanding

 Teaching is outstanding. Teachers ensure that the learning environment is exciting, colourful and full of highly stimulating learning aids, such as toys and soft materials, which children explore enthusiastically. There are warm relationships between staff and children and good levels of staffing mean that each child is known very well and their individual needs met exceptionally well.

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The early years provision is outstanding

 Teachers maintain excellent records of achievement, which show that each child has an ‘action plan’ for their development. The monitoring of children’s progress is meticulous; there are detailed records of targets achieved and comments for each child. Child Progress Tracker logs measure each child’s development over time through the 30 to 50 months and 40 to 60 months stages. Records are updated every day and shared routinely with parents.

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The early years provision is outstanding

 Children are highly motivated, very eager to join in and their positive behaviour shows that they are happy in school. They love collecting attendance stickers in weekly assemblies and attendance is good overall.

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The early years provision is outstanding

 Children’s health, safety and well-being are enhanced significantly by the vigilant care which the early years leader takes to ensure a safe environment. She carries out risk assessment and rigorous checks on safety every day.

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The early years provision is outstanding

 Parents say: ‘As it is a small nursery there is a personal feel to it. The children are always happy. I would recommend this Nursery to any anxious mum as it creates a home from home environment.’

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Grade Judgement

Grade 1 Outstanding Grade 2 Good Grade 3 Requires improvement Grade 4 Inadequate

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Grade Judgement

Detailed grade characteristics can be viewed in the Non-association independent school inspection handbook which is published on the GOV.UK website: www.gov.uk/government/publications/non- association-independent-school-inspection-handbook .

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School details

Unique reference number 120329 Inspection number 462912 DfE registration number 856/6003 Type of school Independent Day School School status Independent school Age range of pupils 3–11 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 55 Number of part time pupils 15 Proprietor Francis J Fernandes Headteacher Paul Hitchcock Date of previous school inspection March 2012 Annual fees (day pupils) £3,825 - £7,575 Telephone number 0116 270 7414 Fax number N/A Email address office@leicesterprep.co.uk; p.hitchcock@leicesterprep.co.uk guidance 'Raising concerns and making a complaint about Ofsted', which is available from Ofsted’s website: www.gov.uk/government/publications/complaints-about-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

inspects to 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. If you would like a copy of this document in a different format, such as large print or Braille, please telephone 0300 123 4234, or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk . You may reuse this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. To view this licence, visit

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School details

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/ , write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk Interested in our work? You can subscribe to our website for news, information and updates at https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/user .

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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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