Ormskirk St Anne's Catholic Primary School

Ormskirk St Anne’s Catholic Primary School Aughton Street, Townend, Ormskirk, Lancashire L39 3LQ

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Overall effectiveness Requires improvement

Effectiveness of leadership and management Requires improvement

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Overall effectiveness Requires improvement

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Requires improvement

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Overall effectiveness Requires improvement

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Requires improvement

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Overall effectiveness Requires improvement

Outcomes for pupils Requires improvement

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Overall effectiveness Requires improvement

Early years provision Requires improvement

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Overall effectiveness Requires improvement

Overall effectiveness at previous inspection Outstanding

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This is a school that requires improvement

 The standards reached by pupils in English and mathematics have declined since the last inspection.  Leaders do not have an accurate enough view of the quality of teaching in the school or of pupils’ achievement. As a result, their plans to improve the school are not precise enough.  The more-able pupils do not make good progress. This is particularly the case in mathematics across Key Stage 2. In addition, the gaps in attainment between boys and girls in reading and writing are not closing rapidly enough.  The time given to other curriculum subjects is not sufficient to enable pupils to develop their wider learning in any depth.  Teachers’ subject knowledge in mathematics is underdeveloped. They do not have the skills to meet the needs of able pupils in this subject.  Teachers do not establish clear expectations for pupils’ written work. Consequently, pupils make unnecessary errors that impede their progress in

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This is a school that requires improvement

developing good literacy skills.  Pupils’ attitudes to learning are not yet good. Uninspiring teaching means that some pupils get easily distracted and do not work as hard as they should.  The leadership and quality of teaching in the early years requires improvement. As with the rest of the school, more-able children do not quickly build on their skills and make rapid progress.

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The school has the following strengths

 Attendance is high. Pupils enjoy coming to school and say they feel safe and are cared for well.  Leaders have acted effectively to improve phonics across the early years and Key Stage 1. Pupils’ progress in acquiring the skills they need to read is now secure.  Pupils’ conduct is good. They have very positive relationships with each other and with adults.  Overall, pupils reach high levels of attainment by the end of Key Stage 1. They make expected progress in English and mathematics by the end of Year 6, with the vast majority reaching age- related expectations.  The school provides good opportunities for pupils’ social, moral, spiritual and cultural education. Pupils develop a strong sense of right and wrong.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Increase the effectiveness of all school leaders and, in particular, the impact they have on improving the quality of teaching by: – ensuring that school self-evaluation and development planning is informed by an incisive understanding of pupil progress – rapidly increasing leaders’ expertise in understanding what constitutes effective teaching, particularly for the more-able pupils in all key stages of the school – ensuring the subject leader for mathematics has the skills, time and training needed to drive improvements in this subject – increasing the regularity and quality of monitoring arrangements, so that teachers receive regular support and advice and are held to account for the progress pupils make – using the information gathered from these arrangements to directly and effectively inform the performance management of teachers – establishing links with other schools so that leaders learn from best practice elsewhere.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Improve the quality of teaching and by this raise achievement, particularly for the more-able pupils and for boys in English, by: – providing subject-specific training and support to all teachers and other staff in mathematics, so they understand the skills pupils need in order to make rapid progress – ensuring teachers plan learning that has a clear purpose and that builds pupils’ academic competency across all subjects – ensuring teachers embed the new assessment system into their work, including providing high-quality feedback to pupils, indicating what they need to do next – establishing whole-school expectations about the presentation and execution of pupils’ written work.  Improve the attitudes to learning of pupils in lessons by ensuring they have access to challenging, stimulating work that encourages them to engage fully.  Ensure parents are kept fully informed of the changes and improvements made in the school, including of

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

the progress their children make across all their subjects.  An external review of governance should be undertaken to see how this aspect of school leadership can be improved.

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Effectiveness of leadership and management requires improvement

 Standards have declined since the last inspection. While the majority of pupils achieve well in relation to national averages, the more-able pupils do not make the progress they should.  School leaders produce a lot of information on pupil progress. However, they do not analyse this well enough. They do not track the progress of groups of pupils. For example, they have only recently identified that, at each phase of the school, boys do not achieve as highly as girls do in reading and writing. Consequently, they are only starting to tackle what have been some long-standing issues.  Leaders’ evaluation of the school’s effectiveness is too generous. While the two deputy headteachers check on teaching, these observations are short, largely informal and are not informed by the progress pupils are making over time. Consequently, leaders believe teaching and standards are better than they actually are.

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Effectiveness of leadership and management requires improvement

 Governors and the headteacher have not established an ambitious vision or culture in the school. While they are not complacent, they have realised too late that much needs to change if the school is to perform in line with national expectations.  Subject leadership is underdeveloped. The mathematics subject leader has monitored teaching in this subject in the past, but not recently. The coordinator does not have a plan for improving mathematics. Other subject leaders have concentrated on supporting staff to develop the new National Curriculum for each year group. However, the impact of their work has been limited by the subject knowledge and expertise of teaching staff.  Leaders have taken effective action to improve the teaching of phonics (the sounds that letters make). They worked quickly to identify the reasons for the dip in standards in 2014. They introduced a new scheme for the teaching of phonics and have rapidly increased teachers’ subject knowledge so that it can

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Effectiveness of leadership and management requires improvement

be effectively delivered. Pupils are now making good progress in acquiring the skills they need to become successful readers.  The curriculum is broad and has been developed in line with new National Curriculum requirements. Teachers have worked well together to make clear what pupils should learn in each subject. However, the time given to some subjects, for example to science, is not enough to enable pupils to cover learning in depth and make good progress. Developments to complement the curriculum, such as the ‘forest schools’ initiative, are too recent to have had a discernible impact.  The school’s work to develop pupils’ social, moral, spiritual and cultural awareness is good. Pupils learn about other faiths within their religious education curriculum and have opportunities to visit other places of worship. Global awareness week enables pupils to learn about other parts of the world and other

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Effectiveness of leadership and management requires improvement

cultures. There is an active school council which supports pupils’ understanding of democracy.  The school’s ethos of ‘Loving God in all we do’ teaches children to value and respect themselves and each other. This supports an appreciation of fundamental British values, although pupils do not recognise this as such.  The vast majority of parents support the school and believe it is doing a good job in educating their children. However, a few parents during the inspection voiced their concerns about the leadership of the school. A proportion of parents responding to Ofsted’s online survey, Parent View, raised concerns about the information they receive on their child’s progress in school. This confirms inspectors’ views that leaders do not do enough to make clear how successful pupils are in comparison to other children nationally.  The school has arranged for an adviser from the local authority to visit the headteacher several times a

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Effectiveness of leadership and management requires improvement

year and provide external advice. His reports show that he has not adequately challenged the headteacher about his interpretation of the school’s data. Consequently, the local authority did not identify the serious decline in standards in the school and did not intervene to attempt to prevent this.  The governance of the school – Governors have some understanding of the school’s strengths and weaknesses. However, they are not sufficiently well informed both as to current standards and to the quality of teaching. They have raised questions about progress in mathematics but, from the information they receive, they have been unable to identify that this is because of weak teaching in this subject. – Governors have supported the headteacher in challenging the small amount of weak teaching he has identified. However, they have not sought enough information to justify decisions made to award teachers additional pay at their annual appraisal. They too readily accept the headteacher’s view that

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Effectiveness of leadership and management requires improvement

teaching is good, when standards indicate otherwise. – The school receives small amounts of additional funding for disadvantaged pupils and for the PE and sport funding. Governors ensure that this is spent well and outcomes for disadvantaged pupils have improved over the last year. Younger children benefit from specialised sports coaching. However, they do not have in place effective arrangements for evaluating the impact of this funding, as leaders do not focus enough on the impact of individual interventions in school.  The arrangements for safeguarding are effective. Governors ensure that safer recruitment procedures are assiduously followed. Staff have recently received updated child protection training, which has included understanding the signs that a child or adult is at risk of radicalisation.

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment requires improvement

 Teachers do not have the subject knowledge they need, particularly in mathematics, in order to stretch the more-able pupils and ensure they make good progress over time. They can confidently teach mathematical functions and calculations. However, work in books shows that pupils do not have enough opportunities to develop their mathematical thinking by, for example, applying these approaches to more complex problem-solving activities.  Teachers plan learning based on a set of activities for pupils to complete, rather than thinking carefully about the academic knowledge and understanding they want to build over time. This is apparent in every subject, but particularly in those other than English and mathematics.  All too often, pupils complete undemanding tasks. For example, inspectors observed older pupils cutting and sticking a series of pictures onto a timeline to represent the growth of Egyptian culture. Few pupils

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment requires improvement

read or understood what was on the pictures. They organised them by their dates, without actually gaining any historical knowledge or understanding of chronology.  Where teaching is more effective, teachers select resources that inspire pupils and ask questions that encourage pupils to think. In these classes, pupils are encouraged to demonstrate what they know, understand and can do against an agreed set of objectives. However, even in these lessons the more- able pupils do not make good progress.  In line with the school’s assessment policy, teachers check pupils’ work in class against a list of objectives they want them to meet in each year. However, the feedback pupils receive from their class teacher is too variable. Some teachers give careful thought to how they can support pupils to improve. Others write cursory comments and do not give pupils enough guidance or additional support to improve.

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment requires improvement

Consequently, over time, teachers’ feedback is having limited impact on the progress pupils’ make.  Teachers and teaching assistants deliver guided reading sessions well. However, during these periods of the school day, other pupils are given tasks to do that have little purpose and do not engage them. This directly contributes to pupils’ lack of commitment to their learning.  The teaching of phonics has improved substantially over the last two years. Teachers now have a good understanding of how to enable younger children to learn to read. Teachers and other adults have been trained effectively and the expectations for teaching this skill are clear. As a result, pupils are now making more rapid progress in their reading and are developing good skills to support accurate spelling as they leave Key Stage 1.

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Personal development and welfare

 The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is good.  Attendance remains high in comparison to the national average. The school has not excluded any pupil, either permanently or for a shorter fixed-term, for a number of years.  The welfare of pupils is particularly important to staff and relationships between adults and pupils are positive. Teachers and teaching assistants are very encouraging to pupils, helping them to increase in their self-confidence and to ‘have a go’ when work appears hard.  Pupils are confident and articulate. They are very welcoming to visitors and are able to identify what they like best about their school and their classes. Those pupils who spoke with inspectors said they feel safe in school and that bullying is dealt with well. They have a good awareness of how to stay safe online. However, pupils have less awareness of other types of bullying, including racial and homophobic bullying.

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Personal development and welfare

 The vast majority of parents agree that their children are safe and well-looked after in school. For many of those who spoke to inspectors, this was the one aspect of the school’s work that they identified for particular praise.

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Behaviour

 The behaviour of pupils requires improvement.  Pupils’ attitudes to learning are not yet good. They conduct themselves well in class, listen to their teachers and do as they are told. However, they are frequently uninterested in what they are learning and, consequently, complete tasks without any due care or attention. The standard of the presentation of work in their books reflects that this has been the case for some time.  Pupils cooperate well with each other in class. They follow the routines of the school day and younger children learn to play happily with each other in the infant department.  Pupils in the junior part of the school also say that poor behaviour rarely happens. However, pupils do not give due care or consideration to each other during playtimes, when they can be found charging around in groups and hitting balls against windows and other pupils. They do not understand that this behaviour

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Behaviour

can be disrespectful and potentially harmful.

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Outcomes for pupils require improvement

 The vast majority of pupils make the progress that would be expected for their age, across the school, in both English and mathematics. They reach standards by the end of Key Stage 1 that are consistently above the national average in writing and mathematics. However, given their starting points, more pupils should exceed age-related expectations by the end of Year 2 than is the case.  Pupils’ attainment in the phonics test was poor in 2014. The school has rapidly addressed this and pupils in Year 1 and Year 2 last year did considerably better. Results are now more in line with what is expected nationally. These improvements are set to continue as the teaching of phonics has improved right from when pupils start at the school.  Pupils make expected progress in reading, writing and mathematics across Key Stage 2. They reach levels of attainment that are broadly average. Given their starting points, this is not good enough. Not enough

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Outcomes for pupils require improvement

pupils achieve a higher level 5 in mathematics by the end of Year 6. This has been the case for at least the last two years. Similarly, the progress that current pupils make in this subject also shows that the more-able pupils are not stretched enough to exceed expectations.  The school assesses attainment in writing to be consistently strong. However, this is not reflected in pupils’ workbooks. There is no common approach to the teaching of writing, and expectations for what pupils should demonstrate in their written work are not high enough. Over time, this leads to some pupils developing unnecessarily bad habits in relation to spelling, punctuation and grammar. This is borne out by test results at the end of Year 6.  There are gaps in the achievement between boys and girls in reading and writing at all phases in the school. While their attainment in mathematics is strong, they fall behind other boys nationally in reading

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Outcomes for pupils require improvement

by the end of Key Stage 2. The picture of current progress remains unclear, although work in books does not evidence any great improvement on historical test results.  Disadvantaged pupils and those who are disabled or have special educational needs make similar progress to other pupils in the school. There are too few of these pupils to report on their achievement in detail.

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Early years provision requires improvement

 A significant proportion of children join the early years with skills and knowledge that are above what would be expected of their age. However, the recent assessment results conducted by the school do not reflect this. The leader of early years and her staff have not ensured that they have an accurate baseline of pupils’ achievements. Consequently, their plans do not rapidly build on what children already know and can do.  The quality of teaching in the early years requires improvement. The provision of activities is set up to ensure that children have the opportunity to access all areas of learning appropriate for this stage. However, the way teachers plan activities does not always make it clear what learning should be taking place. As with the rest of the school, the more-able children are not identified early enough nor supported to make good progress in this phase.  Children cooperate well with routines, learn and play happily together. However, they are easily distracted

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Early years provision requires improvement

and sometimes slow to follow the instructions of their teachers. They do not sustain their concentration when other children answer questions or show what they can do.  By the end of the early years stage, children reach a good level of development that is just above the national average. They gain the skills, particularly in aspects of communication and language, literacy and mathematics, that help them to make a secure transition into Key Stage 1. Pupils in the current Year 1 demonstrate this, as they are ready to learn in a more formalised setting.

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School details

Unique reference number 119682 Local authority Lancashire Inspection number 10002552

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School details

This inspection was carried out under section 8 of the Education Act 2005. The inspection was also deemed a section 5 inspection under the same Act.

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School details

Type of school Primary School category Voluntary aided Age range of pupils 4–11 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 422 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Liz Rafferty Headteacher Joe White Telephone number 01695 574697 Website www.saintannesormskirk.co.uk Email address head@st-annesrc.lancs.sch.uk Date of previous inspection 27 June 2008

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Information about this school

 Ormskirk St Anne’s Catholic Primary School is a larger than average primary school situated within the Archdiocese of Liverpool.  The school is situated in an area of relative advantage. The number of pupils who are disadvantaged and entitled to support through pupil premium funding (additional government funding allocated to schools for pupils who are on free school meals or who are looked after by the local authority) is very low in comparison to the national average.  The vast majority of pupils are of White British heritage and speak English as their first language.  The proportion of pupils who are disabled or who have special educational needs is below average.  A new headteacher has been appointed since the last inspection. He took up post in 2010 following the retirement of the former headteacher. Two new deputy headteachers have also been appointed in the last few years.  There is a privately run nursery on the same site as the school. This is inspected separately to the school.

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Information about this school

 The school meets the current government floor standards. These are the minimum expectations for pupils’ attainment and progress by the end of Year 6.

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Information about this inspection

 Inspectors observed 31 parts of lessons. Some of these were observed jointly with one of the deputy headteachers. They scrutinised pupils’ work in class and examined an extensive range of books from pupils across the school. This was in order to evaluate the quality of teaching and its impact on learning over time.  Inspectors spoke with pupils at all times of the school day. They spoke separately to two groups of pupils about their work and their experience of behaviour in the school. They also observed and spoke to pupils at social times.  Inspectors spoke to parents at the end of the school day. They also considered three written submissions by parents and the 80 responses to Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View.  Inspectors held discussions with the school’s leadership team, with a group of governors, including the Chair of the Governing Body, and with members of staff with other responsibilities. This included the

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Information about this inspection

subject leader for mathematics and the coordinator for pupils who are disabled or have special educational needs.  The lead inspector spoke to an adviser from the local authority by telephone.  Inspectors scrutinised a range of documentation, which included the school’s self-evaluation and development plan, information on the progress current pupils are making as well as policies relating to teaching, learning and assessment. They scrutinised records relating to the safety and well-being of pupils, including employment checks made on adults, school records of bullying and attendance reports. Inspectors evaluated the records of checks made by leaders on the quality of teaching performance, including anonymised annual appraisal information.

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Inspection team

Philippa Darley, lead inspector Her Majesty’s Inspector Samantha Kidd Ofsted Inspector John Shutt Ofsted Inspector Lenford White David Woodhouse Ofsted Inspector Ofsted Inspector 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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Inspection team

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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Inspection team

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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Inspection team

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, further education and skills, 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 1231, 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 www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence , write to the Information Policy Team,

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Inspection team

The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk .

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Inspection team

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Inspection team

T: 0300 123 4234 Textphone: 0161 618 8524 E: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk W: www.ofsted.gov.uk

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