Havelock Junior School

Havelock Junior School Havelock Street, Desborough, Kettering, NN14 2LU

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Overall effectiveness

Previous inspection: Not previously inspected This inspection: Requires improvement 3 Leadership and management Requires improvement 3 Behaviour and safety of pupils Requires improvement 3 Quality of teaching Requires improvement 3 Achievement of pupils Requires improvement 3

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This is a school that requires improvement. It is not good because

 Leaders and governors have not been successful in improving the quality of teaching and achievement, over the last two years.  They have yet to establish, throughout the academy, a culture of high expectations and positive attitudes to learning among all pupils.  Monitoring of the quality of teaching is not focused sharply enough on pupils’ progress.  Too many pupils do not take enough care with their handwriting and presentation.  Pupils do not always study topics in sufficient depth.  The work that teachers set does not always build on what pupils already know and can do.  The additional funds, to help disadvantaged pupils, have not been used to full effect.  Too few less able and disadvantaged pupils are making good progress. As a result, the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and others is not closing quickly enough.  The impact that marking has on pupils’ progress varies from class to class.

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This is a school that requires improvement. It is not good because

 Although arrangements to keep pupils safe are in place and are effective, governors have not fulfilled their responsibility to check that all aspects of these arrangements meet statutory requirements.  Some parents do not feel their views and concerns are listened to.

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The school has the following strengths

 Improvements in the tracking of pupils’ progress are providing leaders with an accurate view of pupils’ performance.  Attendance and punctuality have improved. Attendance is now similar to the national average.  Older pupils enjoy extra responsibility and some of them organise clubs and events for others.  Pupils say that they feel safe, and their parents agree.  The teaching of physical education and games is good.  The academy provides pupils with a wide range of sports clubs and events. Pupils develop their skills well in lessons and are particularly successful in inter school competitions.

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Information about this inspection

 The inspectors observed learning and teaching in all twelve classes. The acting headteacher joined the lead inspector on several visits to observe pupils at work in lessons. The inspectors examined pupils’ work, spoke with them in lessons and on the playground, and heard some of them read.  The inspectors reviewed a range of documents, including the academy’s plans for improvement, and policies about keeping pupils safe. They also examined a range of data about pupils’ progress.  The inspectors held discussions with teachers, the acting headteacher, three governors, two members of the trust board, and a consultant who provides support and advice.  Parents’ perceptions were analysed from the 90 parents who registered their views on the Parent View website. Inspectors also spoke to parents at the start and the end of the school day.

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Inspection team

Christopher Parker, Lead inspector Additional Inspector

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Information about this school

 Havelock Junior School converted to become an academy school in September 2013. It is a member of the Montsaye Community Learning Partnership. When Ofsted last inspected its predecessor school, of the same name, it was judged to be satisfactory.  The academy is larger than the average-sized primary school. The pupils are taught in twelve single-age classes.  The vast majority of pupils are White British.  The proportion of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs is below average.  The proportion of disadvantaged pupils supported by the pupil premium (additional government funding for pupils known to be eligible for free school meals or looked after by the local authority) is above the national average.  The academy meets the government’s current floor standards, which set the minimum expectations for pupils’ attainment and progress in English and mathematics.  There have been many changes of staff over the last year that have affected all year groups. Two newly

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Information about this school

qualified teachers took up their posts in September 2014. The school has been led by an acting headteacher, and an acting deputy headteacher, since September 2013.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Improve the quality of teaching so that more pupils, particularly lower attaining and disadvantaged pupils, make good progress in reading, writing and mathematics, by:  setting tasks that build on what pupils already know and can do  marking spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes in a manner that promotes improvement and greater accuracy  ensuring that pupils cover topics in sufficient depth to develop a secure understanding  expecting all pupils to take care with their presentation of work and maintain neat handwriting.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Improve leadership and management, by:  ensuring pupil premium funds are used to full effect and their impact evaluated effectively  establishing, throughout the school, a culture of high expectations and positive attitudes to learning among all pupils  making sure that the monitoring of learning and teaching focuses sharply on their impact on pupils’ progress  consulting with, informing and encouraging more parents to be frequently involved in school life so that they are convinced their views and concerns are fully considered.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

External reviews of governance and of the academy’s use of the pupil premium should be undertaken in order to assess how these aspects of leadership and management may be improved.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 Although leaders and governors have the success of the academy and its pupils at the heart of their work, they have yet to establish high expectations, throughout the academy, of what pupils can achieve. The prospect of a possible merger with the infant school, uncertainty about the leadership of the school, and considerable disruption to staffing have all contributed to slowing leaders’ efforts to bring about improvements.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 The academy has not made the most of the pupil premium funds. Consequently, not all disadvantaged pupils have had the opportunity to achieve as well as others. Last year, neither leaders nor governors carried out an evaluation of the impact, of their spending decisions, on the progress of disadvantaged pupils. In 2014, the gap between the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and that of other pupils grew wider. A plan is in place this year, which provides both leaders and governors with details against which they can evaluate the success of the support the academy provides for these pupils.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 Leaders’ evaluation of the academy’s performance is accurate. They are acutely aware that there is much to do. Their current plans are yet to have a marked impact because the disruption to staffing has affected all year groups. Leaders have not yet been successful in establishing consistently good teaching throughout the school.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 Teachers who lead subjects have good subject knowledge. Along with year leaders, they observe lessons and scrutinise pupils’ work. While these activities provide some pointers for teachers about how to improve, they are not focused sharply enough on the impact of teaching on pupils’ learning and progress. The acting headteacher has set teacher performance targets that align with the academy’s priority to improve achievement.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 Although not yet ensuring all groups of pupils make good progress, the curriculum covers a broad range of subjects. While some of the work that pupils complete shows that they are developing a depth of understanding, other pieces of work show their learning to be more superficial. The school has an effective physical education (PE) curriculum and an extensive range of sports clubs and teams that compete against other schools. The teacher who leads PE manages the primary sports premium funding very effectively to provide further opportunities for pupils to participate in sport and to develop their skills.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 The academy’s values, displayed prominently around the school, promote the pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. Through a suitable programme of personal, social and health education, pupils are developing attributes that prepare them well for life in modern Britain, including an understanding of rights and responsibilities. Art lessons extend pupils’ cultural development and many good examples of pupils’ work are on display. Discrimination is not tolerated and ‘respect’ is strongly promoted throughout the school.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 The academy receives support from the trust through an improvement partner who helps to monitor the quality of teaching and has helped to implement a method of tracking pupils’ progress consistent with that in other schools in the academy. The academy participates in a range of support networks and meetings for leaders at all levels. However, the academy has not received the degree of support it needs to improve markedly, achievement throughout the school.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 While the majority of parents are pleased with the work of the school, some are not. Some parents do not think their views or concerns are given sufficient consideration. Leaders have arranged events to explain, for example, how mathematics is taught. However, it is clear that leaders and governors have not yet convinced all parents that their views are fully taken into account.

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The leadership and management requires improvement

 The academy has in place all of the required background checks on adults who work in the school and has taken full account of the latest guidance. All staff training is up to date and four members of staff are trained to lead safeguarding.  The governance of the school:  Governance is not fully effective. Although pupils are safe in the academy, governors have not fully checked that the academy is doing all that it should to meet statutory requirements for safeguarding pupils.  Governors are careful to control the spending of the pupil premium, but they have not checked that it is having the desired effect of raising the attainment of disadvantaged pupils.  Governors have set the headteacher's performance targets and they know that performance management of all staff is carried out. Any increases in teachers’ pay are linked to their performance.  Governors receive regular reviews of the quality of teaching, and an increasing range of data so that

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The leadership and management requires improvement

they can evaluate how well pupils are performing. Subject leaders attend meetings to keep governors abreast of developments in their subject. Governors have monitored the effectiveness of teaching assistants.

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Behaviour

 The behaviour of pupils requires improvement. Although pupils are well behaved in lessons not all have wholly positive attitudes to learning. In discussion, pupils are generally positive about lessons and say they are happy at school. However, some pupils too readily sit back and let others answer their teacher’s questions. Too many pupils do not take sufficient pride in their work, which is sometimes untidy and poorly presented.

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Behaviour

 The academy’s records show that the number of recorded incidents of poor behaviour has reduced noticeably this year. Pupils say that behaviour is good for ‘most of the time’ and that teachers deal firmly with poor behaviour should it arise. However, low-level chatter sometimes detracts pupils from the task in hand and prevents them from concentrating fully on their work.

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Behaviour

 Older pupils take on responsibilities, as members of the ‘sports crew’ and organise clubs and sports events for other pupils. Members of the school council contribute to decisions about improving the academy and, for example, purchasing equipment for the playground.

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Safety

 The school’s work to keep pupils safe and secure requires improvement. Governors have not checked that the academy meets all safeguarding requirements. In spite of this oversight, pupils are safe because leaders have made comprehensive checks to make sure that adults are able to work with children and that they have completed the necessary training.

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Safety

 Pupils said that they feel safe in school and on the playground and the overwhelming majority of parents agree. However, a third of parents responding to the online survey expressed a concern about the way the academy deals with bullying. Inspectors spoke to pupils and staff to investigate this concern. Pupils said that although some name-calling occurs bullying is rare, and should it come to teachers’ attention it is dealt with quickly. They said that squabbles, for example, arising from football in the playground are quickly resolved. Staff were surprised by parents’ concerns. The academy’s log contains a very small number of incidents of bullying.

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Safety

 Pupils know about the different forms that bullying can take and what they should do if they are worried or concerned. They know what to do to remain safe on the internet and the steps to take if they receive a message from someone they do not know. Inappropriate use of technology by a very small number of pupils led the academy to emphasise to pupils that they must behave, when communicating online, in the same way they would at other times.

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Safety

 As a result, of the steps taken by the academy, attendance has improved and it is now broadly average. Punctuality has also improved and the proportion of pupils who are late for school is very small.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Teachers’ expectations are not always high enough in some classes. Teachers do not routinely insist on neat handwriting and presentation, or accurate spelling, punctuation and grammar. Although teachers in the same year group often use the same lesson content, the clarity of explanations, degree of challenge and what the pupils learn varies, resulting in inconsistent progress in reading, writing and mathematics.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Teachers do not always set work that builds on what pupils, including the less able, already know and are able to do. In mathematics, for example, teachers sometimes set tasks before pupils have mastered the skills that they need to tackle problems. Although the academy has established a system of recording pupils’ progress and holding regular meetings to identify pupils who are falling behind, some lessons do not take enough account of what pupils need to learn next.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Teachers question pupils to assess their understanding. For example, in one Year 4 class, when pupils were learning to use similes, the teacher probed pupils’ understanding in order to reshape the lesson. She then tailored the tasks to the needs of different abilities within the class. In a parallel class, the teacher was not as clear about the purpose of the task, did not establish the extent of pupils’ understanding or reshape the task. Consequently, pupils in one class made faster progress than those in the other.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 The effectiveness of marking varies considerably. Scrutiny of samples of the pupils’ work shows that some pupils use the guidance that they receive on how to improve their work well. In discussion, Year 6 pupils, said they valued their teacher’s comments and that their learning is benefiting positively from them. In some classes, in other year groups, the teachers’ comments are not as helpful nor are they always followed up by the pupils.

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 Some of the teaching makes good use of a range of resources to motivate and interest pupils. For example, in Year 6 pupils were using information that they had collected to record the introduction to a television programme, about rainforests, using a tablet computer. Pupils of all abilities were fully engaged, and making good gains in both their written and spoken English .

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The quality of teaching requires improvement

 The teaching of PE and games is good. In Year 5, the pupils responded very positively to the teaching assistant leading the lesson. They developed their hand-eye coordination through activities that built progressively on the last.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 When pupils join the academy in Year 3, their attainment is in line with the national average. During their time in the academy their progress ebbs and flows because of inconsistencies in the quality of teaching. In 2013 and 2014, pupils left the academy having achieved results that were very similar to the national average in reading, writing and mathematics.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Too few pupils, particularly the less able pupils and disadvantaged pupils, are making good progress. As a result, some of these pupils are not reaching the National Curriculum levels expected by the end of Year 6 and the gaps between disadvantaged pupils and their classmates are not closing quickly enough.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 The results of national tests in 2014 reveal a gap in the attainment of disadvantaged pupils with that of their classmates. At the end of Year 6, these pupils left the academy two terms behind their peers, and other pupils nationally, in reading, writing and mathematics. Throughout the school, the progress of these pupils is patchy, and not fast enough for them to catch up.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 The results of the spelling, grammar and punctuation test at the end of Year 6, in 2014, showed pupils left the academy, on average, six months behind others nationally. The school has focused on improving the content of pupils’ writing but grammar and punctuation remain a weakness in some pupils’ work. While teachers often highlight spelling mistakes and pupils correct them, the marking of grammar and punctuation is less frequent and less effective.  Inaccuracies in spelling, grammar and punctuation are often more apparent in work where pupils have not taken sufficient care to write neatly and present their work to a high standard. Overall, pupils’ work is rather untidy. Some pupils do not hold their pencils properly, form their letters correctly and have not developed a fluent handwriting style.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 Although many of the most able pupils reach higher levels of attainment, and are making the progress expected of them, there are occasions when the work they are set is not sufficiently challenging. In 2014, almost all of the pupils who scored highly when they were in Year 2 did so in Year 6 in reading, writing and mathematics. The proportion of these pupils who reached the very highest National Curriculum level compares favourably with the national average.

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The achievement of pupils requires improvement

 The special educational needs coordinator manages the assessment and support for disabled pupils and those with special educational needs well. Some recent developments have yet to have an impact on the progress these pupils make. Some small group and one to one teaching is proving effective and has resulted in some pupils making good gains while others are making steady progress.

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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 140054 Local authority Northamptonshire Inspection number 450323

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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 Junior School category Academy converter Age range of pupils 7–11 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 328 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Mary Payne Headteacher Kier Dicken (Acting Head) Date of previous school inspection Not previously inspected Telephone number 01536 760361 Fax number 01536 763401 Email address head@havelock-jun.northants-ecl.gov.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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