Dyke House Sports and Technology College

Dyke House Sports & Technology College Mapleton Road, Hartlepool TS24 8NQ

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Overall effectiveness Good

Effectiveness of leadership and management Good

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Overall effectiveness Good

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Good

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Overall effectiveness Good

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Outstanding

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Overall effectiveness Good

Overall effectiveness at previous inspection Not applicable

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This is a good school

 The academy is continuing to get better because senior leaders, staff and governors share a common desire to improve all aspects of its provision.  Students behave impeccably and work really well with each other.  With very few exceptions, students have a very positive attitude to their work.  The curriculum provides many opportunities for students to develop their key literacy and numeracy skills.  Academy-based initiatives for targeted students, such as the Year 7 and Year 8 catch-up groups and the ACE (Alternative Curriculum Environment) inclusion centre, are helping these students to be more successful in their work.  Senior leaders tackle ineffective or inadequate teaching quickly. As a result, the quality of teaching, learning and assessment is good and improving.  Governors are knowledgeable about the academy and they work very well with senior leaders.  Almost all disadvantaged students are making at

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This is a good school

least good progress.  The arrangements for safeguarding the students are effective, and the overwhelming majority say they enjoy attending the academy and feel safe.  The staff and parents are very positive about the academy.  The overall quality of the new 16 to 19 study programmes is good.

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It is not yet an outstanding school because

 Gaps still exist in the achievement of different groups of students, and the progress of disadvantaged students is still below that of their peers and the national average.  The academy website is inaccurate.  The governing body has not met all the requirements of the Equality Act 2010.  Leaders’ monitoring of the quality of the 16 to 19 study programmes is improving but is not yet robust enough.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Eradicate all gaps in the performance and attendance of the different groups of students in the academy, especially those identified as disadvantaged, by: accelerating their progress in all subjects so that it reaches at least the level expected for their age continuing to improve attendance and reduce persistent absenteeism.  Minimise the overuse of colloquial language by teachers in order to help students improve the quality and accuracy of their oral and written work.  Ensure that all teachers make the best use of students’ progress information, especially in lessons, so that they become better at knowing when the students have acquired and consolidated their learning, and the time is right to move on to something different and/or more challenging.  Ensure that the governing body meets all the necessary requirements of the Equality Act 2010 by: writing and publishing an accessibility plan, reviewed every three years, which describes the extent to

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

which disabled students can participate in the academy curriculum, how the physical environment can be improved to increase their access to facilities, and how the academy can improve access to information which is readily available to students who are not disabled writing and publishing equality objectives every four years and annually publishing information on how it is meeting the aims of the general public sector equality duty.  Ensure that all information on the academy website is accurate and up to date.

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Effectiveness of leadership and management is good

 Senior leaders, governors, staff and students share a common vision for the academy to be as successful as possible.  The executive headteacher has the complete confidence of staff, students and parents. The questionnaires returned by parents and staff were overwhelmingly positive about all aspects of the academy.  Staff work well with governors. This relationship is based on trust, commitment and awareness that they are jointly responsible for making all aspects of the academy better.  Senior leaders and heads of department challenge weak teaching, and with the use of additional support and training are helping to improve the overall quality.  Senior leaders have developed positive partnerships with other schools, both within and outside of the Northern Education Trust.  The executive headteacher and his senior colleagues have identified key areas where the academy needs to improve. They have effectively combined these areas together within a written academy development

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Effectiveness of leadership and management is good

plan, which is used by them, governors and Northern Education Trust officers to know if the academy is improving fast enough in each of the identified areas. However, this plan has some weaknesses because there is too much variation in the quality of the separate written sections. In addition, no thought is yet given to how the academy can regularly share the outcomes of this important plan with parents and carers.  Senior leaders have considered the quality and type of curricular provision very carefully. For example, successful adaptations have been made to provide a more focused curriculum for students identified as needing extra help in literacy and numeracy in Years 7 and 8.  The extra funding available to the academy, known as ‘catch-up’ and ‘pupil premium’, is being used to good effect to provide a literacy/numeracy-rich curriculum for these students. Although these extra activities are helping to improve essential literacy and numeracy skills, disadvantaged students are not yet

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Effectiveness of leadership and management is good

doing as well as all other students in the academy.  The curriculum also provides numerous opportunities to help students develop their personal skills, knowledge and understanding of life in their own and the broader communities outside of the academy. An extensive range of extra-curricular activities is providing a rich and varied range of opportunities to participate in the life of the academy.  Teachers plan many and varied opportunities for students to develop their understanding of the difference between right and wrong, and to appreciate how different groups in Britain, and other groups from around the world, live their lives. There are many opportunities for the students to learn about public services, which is helping them to appreciate some of the fundamental values of living in Britain.  The community has access to the well-resourced physical education facilities during out-of-academy

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Effectiveness of leadership and management is good

hours. The highly motivated specialist staff have thought carefully about increasing participation in a more active lifestyle. Through the use of the physical education and sport premium, which provides extra funding to the academy, these staff are able to extend the range of sporting and other extra-curricular activities to a greater number of students. This money is also allowing the academy to build upon previous sporting initiatives, so that links are made with the primary feeder schools to improve sporting opportunities and the quality of teaching physical education in these schools.  The governance of the school Governors are knowledgeable about the academy. They have carefully considered how every member of the governing body is able to make best use of their experience and expertise. By doing this, governors have been carefully linked with specific subjects and/or to specific year groups, the latter of

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Effectiveness of leadership and management is good

which is known as ‘schools within school’. This carefully thought-out set of links is allowing individual governors, and the governing body collectively, to know how well the academy is working. There is rigour in the way in which the governing body links with officers from the Northern Education Trust. Regular visits from the trust’s achievement partner provides the academy with appropriate challenge and support. The most recent note of a visit from this partner provided the academy with a detailed overview of its performance within each of the inspection areas. While useful in many ways, the inspection team found that the individual grades given in this report were overgenerous. The governing body continues to keep a very careful track of the effectiveness of every teacher in the academy. This is ensuring that the performance management of these staff is both rigorous and fair. The targeting of pupil premium funding on key literacy and numeracy activities is helping to close the

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Effectiveness of leadership and management is good

gaps between disadvantaged students and their peers. Catch-up funding is being used very effectively by providing a separate but literacy/numeracy-rich curriculum for small groups of students in the lower years of Key Stage 3. Arrangements for ensuring that all required academy policies are in place are not yet rigorous enough. For example, there is no accessibility plan and no published equality objectives which relate to the general public sector equality duty of the Equality Act 2010. The academy website, for which the governors are responsible, has numerous errors and is insufficiently detailed in a number of important areas: for example, how the pupil premium funding is helping disadvantaged students make progress in their learning. The link to the previous Ofsted inspection report is to another school, as is the link to the school prospectus. The governors and senior leaders are now aware of these errors and in collaboration with the Northern Education Trust

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Effectiveness of leadership and management is good

are taking urgent steps to update the site.  The arrangements for safeguarding are effective. Required checks have been carried out to ensure that all adults are suitable to work with the students. Governors have ensured that all staff are familiar with, and have read, part 1 of the Keeping Children Safe publication, as required. This ensures that all staff are up to date in their understanding of how to keep all students safe. The child protection policy is part of the academy’s broader safeguarding policy. It is reviewed and updated annually, which meets legal requirements.

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment is good

 Teachers have very good subject knowledge, which they use really well to engage and enthuse students, encouraging and motivating them to achieve the best that they can in all that they do.  High expectations are evident throughout the academy, and the thorough planning reflects this. Teachers’ marking of students’ workbooks also exemplifies this. Teachers demand high standards of presentation so that the students’ work reaches a level that accurately reflects their growing knowledge and understanding of subject content. As a result, students are gaining a greater understanding of how they can improve the quality of their work. Some teachers require the repetitive practising of misspelled words, but there is little evidence that this is preventing future grammatical/spelling errors.  Despite a thorough system of collecting information about student progress across all subjects every half term, there are inconsistencies in its use by some teachers. While teachers generally use this information

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment is good

to plan focused, additional or intervention support for students, not all teachers seem at ease to use this same information when working directly with students in lessons. This means that there are some occasions when teachers fail to recognise that the students have acquired and consolidated their learning, and the time is right that they move on to different or more challenging tasks.  Teachers are very skilled at using peer and group self-assessment, whereby the students are able to reflect on the quality of others’ work to match it against their own.  The emphasis on improving key literacy and numeracy skills is generally helping students to develop the quality of their written work, particularly in the ACE inclusion unit. However, in the main school, some teachers’ overuse of colloquial terms in lessons does little to model good oral skills or challenge the accuracy and quality of students’ spoken answers, so that their follow-on written work reflects a higher

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment is good

quality and use of language.  The regular checking of the quality of teaching by heads of department and senior leaders is helping to maintain a better quality across the academy. This has resulted in recent improvements in subjects where, previously, there has been some underperformance. The staff rightly recognise that this improvement needs to continue at a rapid pace to ensure that all students, particularly those deemed disadvantaged, make at least the expected rate of progress in all subjects.

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Personal development and welfare

 The students are very aware of what is needed to become a successful learner. They aspire to do well, and behave impeccably.  The students work well in lessons, cooperating and supporting each other to complete tasks quickly and successfully. This means that they are able to make good progress with their work, and often learn from each other as well as from the teacher.  The ‘schools within school’ idea, namely that each year group of students is seen as a defined group, is very successful. Students have a sense of belonging to a clearly defined age group, and rather than separate them from other age groups it brings a greater awareness of how they link with both older and younger students.  The attendance gap between disadvantaged students and others is greater than it should be but this is slowly improving so that attendance, overall, remains high.  Staff create a very positive environment for learning, which includes not only formal or traditional subject

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Personal development and welfare

learning, but also the development of personal and social skills, essential for the students to mix and work successfully with others in the academy.  Staff are supportive, approachable and caring of their students’ needs in lessons or with other matters that may influence their attitudes in school. This enables the students to gain greater personal confidence, which contributes significantly to their very positive attitudes to learning.  A well-structured range of assemblies is helping the students gain a clearer sense of right and wrong, as well as developing a deeper appreciation of recent events in the world. This is also helping them to be more sensitive and knowledgeable about how others live, and how some people have values and attitudes which conflict significantly with what is valued and accepted in Britain.  Students say that they feel safe and secure from bullying or harassment. They are aware that some

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Personal development and welfare

people choose to live their lives differently from others, such as lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals. The students say that homophobic name calling is extremely rare and are adamant that staff at the academy would not tolerate it.  The students are very competent users of modern technology, especially computers, and they have an excellent understanding of how to be safe when using and searching the internet, or when using mobile phones.

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Behaviour

 Despite some occasional low-level off-task behaviour from a few, students’ conduct is exemplary. From entering the building at the start of the day to leaving at the end, the students move quickly, quietly and safely. This means that lessons start promptly.  Students behave extremely well in lessons and their attitudes to learning are very positive.  Teachers make it very clear that all students are expected to make a valuable contribution to lessons, and the overwhelming majority embrace this as common practice.  Students concentrate well and are able to work effectively in whatever type of group the teacher asks of them.  Those students who have a history of poor attendance, challenging and disruptive behaviour, and who are currently in the ACE inclusion centre, behave exceptionally well. Staff rarely use any sanctions because the students have very successfully re-engaged with the school and their learning. As a result,

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Behaviour

their attendance has improved significantly. The ACE curriculum, which emphasises working together, cooperating and developing social skills, is helping to promote the students’ personal development extremely well. Opportunities to experience a different type of curriculum, which includes outdoor and adventurous activities, provides a very effective balance with the ongoing promotion of key literacy and numeracy skills.

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Outcomes for pupils are good

 From the time they start at the academy, the vast majority of students from almost all year groups make good progress across a range of subjects, including English and mathematics.  The expected progress of current Year 11 students in English is above average, as it is for almost all year groups in school. A similar profile is seen in mathematics. These are an improvement on the previous Year 11 students in both subjects.  Student performance for 2015 was lower than the previous year, including for disadvantaged students. However, teachers in the academy who have extensive experience in marking GCSE examination papers have identified underperformance in English as a significant factor in this decline, and have requested re- marks of all English papers because they believe there have been serious inconsistencies in the marking of recent examination papers. An initial request for a small number of re-marks at the start of this term

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Outcomes for pupils are good

resulted in almost all being regraded upwards.  The regular collection and analysis of student progress information across all subjects gives staff, especially heads of department, confidence in predicting the rates of progress for all students across the academy. The accuracy and reliability of these predictions are further supported by robust moderation with partner schools and officers from the Northern Education Trust.  Underachievement is tackled quickly and decisively. Students identified as underperforming are challenged to improve quickly through focused work in lessons, or via specific initiatives aimed at improving their performance. For example, the small Year 7 and 8 ‘catch up’ groups have a separate curriculum to the rest of the year groups, which gives extra emphasis to the development of key literacy and numeracy skills. This initiative is helping these students to make faster progress and begin to close

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Outcomes for pupils are good

the performance gaps which exist between them and other students in the same year groups.  There remains a gap in the performance between boys and girls, and disadvantaged higher-ability students and their peers nationally. The academy’s predictions for these groups to close the gap in performance over the coming year appear accurate.  Other groups of students across the academy, in particular the more able, those from lower- or middle- ability bands when they start at the school, and those with disabilities and/or special educational needs, all make good progress.  The students in the ACE inclusion centre make good progress, particularly in reading.  Because of the good rates of progress, students are well prepared for the next stage in their education.

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16 to 19 study programmes are good

 The 16 to 19 study programmes are one year old. These are well structured, varied and imaginative, and are securely based on the most recent guidance from the Department for Education.  Links with external providers are opening up opportunities for the students to experience a range of non- vocational activities, which helps to keep the students enthusiastic and motivated.  Students talk very positively about the quality of support they receive, particularly that staff go out of their way to give them the essential help they need.  Staff have high expectations of their students, which is helping to raise the aspiration levels of the students themselves. These high expectations are also a prime source of motivating and enthusing the students to achieve personal success and go on to further educational study or the world of work.  Senior leaders were well aware of the need to develop rigorous methods for monitoring the quality of

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16 to 19 study programmes are good

provision at the start of the study programmes in 2014, as a lead-up to establishing a regular pattern of judging the quality of provision over a longer term. However, staff failed to anticipate the weak AS results in 2015 because of weak monitoring. The response to address this has been prompt.  Students who enter the study programmes needing to gain a good GCSE grade in either English and/or mathematics are well supported. During the last academic year, six out of seven students gained the required higher grade at the end of the year.

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School details

Unique reference number 139405 Local authority Hartlepool Inspection number 10001747

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School details

This inspection was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005.

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School details

Type of school Secondary School category Academy sponsor-led Age range of pupils 11–19

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programmes

Number of pupils on the school roll 1,228

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programmes

Appropriate authority The governing body, the Northern Education Trust Chair Mr J Taylor Headteacher/Principal/Teacher in charge Mr A Jordon Telephone number 01429 266377 Website http://www.dykehousecollege.com Email address ajordon@dykehouse.hartlepool.sch.uk Date of previous inspection Not applicable

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Information about this school

 The school became a sponsor-led academy with the Northern Education Trust from 1 April 2013.  The academy offers and uses an off-site provision called ACE. This provision provides for vulnerable students at risk of permanent exclusion, and includes pupils and students from primary feeder and other local authority secondary schools.  The overwhelming majority of students are of White British heritage.  The proportion of students entitled to take free school meals is almost twice the national average.  The academy is now an 11 to 19 provider, having opened a sixth form in September 2014.  There is a 0–4-year-old early years provision on the academy site, which is managed by the governing body but registered separately with Ofsted.  The academy links with partner schools within the trust, but currently has a specific link with one, Grangefield Academy in Stockton.  The proportion of students on school action plus or with a statement of special educational needs is

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Information about this inspection

 Four of the five inspectors spent two days in school. The fifth inspector was in school on day 1 only.  Inspectors observed the academy in action, from the start of the day through to the time students left the site. Inspectors visited a range of lessons in different subject areas across the academy. Almost all curricular subjects were seen.  During these lesson visits, inspectors spent time observing teaching, talking with and observing the students, and looking at their work to see how they are progressing in their learning.  The overwhelming majority of teachers who were observed in lessons accepted face-to-face feedback from inspectors.  Inspectors read and evidenced a range of information relating to the work of teachers, senior staff, governors and the Northern Education Trust.  Inspectors met with a small number of lower Key Stage 3 students to hear them read and talk with them about their reading habits and interests.

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Information about this inspection

 Inspectors held meetings with the senior staff, a number of heads of department, which included English and mathematics, governors and representatives from the Northern Education Trust.  Inspectors also met specifically with three groups of students, chosen by the academy to represent all ages and abilities.  The lead inspector looked at the Ofsted online ‘Parent View’ questionnaire before and during the inspection, in additon to receiving written comments from a small number. One hundred and thirty questionnaires and 27 written responses were received. A summary of the main points raised was shared with the executive headteacher.  Fifty staff questionnaires were returned to the inspection team. All were extremely positive about the academy.

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Inspection team

Brian Blake, lead inspector Her Majesty’s Inspector Julie McGrane Ofsted Inspector Robert Jones Ofsted Inspector Lynn Kenworthy Ofsted Inspector Jonathan Parkinson 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

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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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