Morgan's Vale and Woodfalls Church of England Primary School

Store Street Manchester M1 2WD T 0300 123 4234 www.gov.uk/ofsted

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Mr Graham Nagel-Smith Headteacher Morgan’s Vale and Woodfalls Church of England Primary School Morgan’s Vale Road Redlynch Salisbury Wiltshire SP5 2HU

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Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 23 February 2016, I write on behalf of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills to report the inspection findings. The visit was the first short inspection carried out since your predecessor school was judged to be good in February 2013.

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Primary School

The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the previous inspection.  You demonstrate a passion and an absolute belief that every child deserves the best possible education and experience during their primary years. The school’s inclusive ethos is evident in all aspects of its work. ‘Faith in learning, and achievement for all’ is reflected in the everyday life of the school. This ethos and belief is shared by staff and supports pupils to achieve and experience success in their academic and personal development.  You and your governors have an accurate view of the school’s strengths and areas for development. The previous inspection identified the need to improve the quality of teaching in Years 1 and 2 to strengthen attainment in reading. You have made significant changes to your approaches to the teaching of reading and writing throughout the school. Work in books and

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Primary School

assessment information confirm that pupils are making faster progress in all year groups. However, you and your staff recognise that there is further work to do to ensure that all pupils achieve well and make good progress in these key aspects of English.  There have been a number of staffing changes since the previous inspection. You have used this as an opportunity to build an effective and strong team whose members clearly enjoy working together. Their enthusiasm and commitment to their work is evident to the pupils and their families. Relationships between staff and pupils are strong. As a result, pupils say they enjoy coming to school and feel safe and secure. Parents who spoke with me during the inspection were overwhelmingly positive about all aspects of the school. They appreciate the education, care and support their children receive.  Teachers are successfully stepping up to leadership and demonstrate an

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Primary School

increasing understanding of their roles and responsibilities in improving standards further. Drawn up by you and your English and mathematics subject leaders, the school’s action plan and subject action plans set out clearly what needs to be improved further. Consequently, the school is well placed to continue to improve.

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Primary School

Safeguarding is effective.  You and your governors place the highest priority on keeping pupils safe. You ensure that safeguarding policies and procedures are implemented effectively. Staff are vigilant in following up concerns and go the extra mile to provide high-quality support to families when needed. As a result, there is a strong culture of keeping pupils safe and secure.  Pupils know and can explain how to keep safe online as a result of planned e-safety lessons. In discussions during the inspection, pupils were able to debate current topical issues in the news with great maturity and understanding. This lively and interesting debate confirmed pupils’ understanding and respect for other faiths and religions; they were unfailingly polite to each other.  You and your governors carry out all safeguarding checks and recruitment procedures rigorously. Staff are thoroughly checked before taking up their

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Primary School

posts. You ensure that all child protection training is up to date and staff understand their role and responsibility in keeping pupils safe. In addition, staff have completed ‘Prevent’ training to give them a deeper understanding of keeping pupils safe from extreme views and possible radicalisation.  You and your leaders have ensured that all safeguarding arrangements, policies and procedures are fit for purpose and successfully implemented.

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Inspection findings

 You have taken the action needed to improve the teaching of reading and writing across the school. In particular, you have strengthened your approaches to the teaching of letters and sounds (phonics) in the early years, Years 1 and 2. Your leader of English continues to successfully drive these improvements, ensuring that all staff receive high-quality training and support to be able to implement your agreed approaches effectively.  Teaching assistants now lead phonics sessions with the confidence, skills and knowledge required to enable pupils to achieve well. During the inspection, children in the Reception class used their developing phonics knowledge successfully to read unknown words. Older pupils in Years 1 and 2 read confidently and with increasing fluency. In addition, work in pupils’ books confirms they are writing with greater independence and making faster progress. For example, they increasingly use punctuation

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Inspection findings

correctly and their understanding of sentence structure is developing well. The school’s focus on handwriting is helping pupils to present their work neatly, encouraging pride in their achievements. As a result of this drive to improve standards, the school’s information shows a higher proportion of children are on track to achieve a good level of development at the end of the Reception year. Also, most pupils in Year 1 are on track to meet the required standard in the phonics check.  Pupils with special educational needs receive high-quality support. Some pupils in Year 2 are not on track to reach the expected standard. Nonetheless, as a result of carefully planned and skilfully taught interventions, these pupils are making good progress from their starting points.  Pupils in Years 3 to 6 also benefit from your increased focus on the teaching of literacy. Teachers use engaging texts to analyse the impact of

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Inspection findings

authors’ styles of writing and to inspire pupils to write well. For example, pupils in Years 5 and 6 examined the Michael Morpurgo text ‘I believe in unicorns’. Following a high-quality discussion, pupils learned the impact of using command verbs to enhance the effect of the author’s writing for the reader. Work in pupils’ books confirms pupils write regularly.  Progress in English since the beginning of the academic year is evident as a result of the school’s relentless focus on reading and writing. However, leaders are not complacent and, to improve standards further, they have identified the need to provide pupils with more opportunities to write in other areas of the curriculum. In addition, they have supported new staff in implementing their approaches to providing feedback to pupils about how they can improve their work. This is yet to be fully and successfully implemented across the school.  You and your leaders have identified gaps in achievement between

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Inspection findings

disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils and between boys and girls in English and mathematics. Staff are vigilant in planning intervention activities to close these gaps and accelerate progress if pupils are at risk of falling behind. The school’s records and work in pupils’ books seen during the inspection confirm that these pupils are now making faster progress. In particular, disadvantaged pupils are making good progress from their starting points.  Staff work together to check that the assessments they make of pupils’ work are accurate and used effectively to plan pupils’ next steps in learning. The school also moderates judgements with teachers in neighbouring schools and leaders are planning to extend this aspect of their work. However, although subject leaders have an in-depth understanding of pupils’ achievement, records of monitoring confirm that they do not systematically and routinely check the learning and progress

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Inspection findings

of different groups of pupils. Consequently, teachers do not always receive precise guidance about how to improve pupils’ learning and accelerate progress even further.  The mathematics subject leader demonstrates a commitment and ambition to continue to raise standards in this subject. She has given effective support to her colleagues to ensure that they are equipped to deliver the demands of the new, more challenging mathematics curriculum. Although a higher proportion of pupils in Year 6 are on track to reach the higher levels than in the previous year, work in some pupils’ books in other year groups, on occasion, shows the most able are capable of further challenge to ensure that they make the best possible progress.  Pupils’ behaviour is exemplary. They appreciate the interesting and engaging curriculum and lessons teachers plan for them. As a result, they concentrate hard, cooperate well together and discuss and answer

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Inspection findings

questions with confidence. The school’s Christian values guide pupils to ‘be kind, helpful, honest and respectful’. In addition, pupils are involved in their community. For example, they raise money for the Poppy Appeal, Macmillan Cancer charity and take an active part in the Christmas shoe box appeal. The school’s work to develop pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural understanding is highly effective.  Governors are ambitious for the school. They bring a wide range of skills so that they can both challenge and support leaders effectively. Recent high-quality training provided by the school’s improvement partner strengthened governors’ understanding of the school’s performance. For example, they know how well different groups are achieving and how the pupil premium and sport funding is used. However, they acknowledge they now need to strengthen their roles further and check the learning and progress of all groups of pupils more robustly. They have a good

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Inspection findings

understanding of where teaching is strong and where further improvement is needed and ensure that pay awards are closely linked to pupils’ performance. The school’s capacity for continued improvement is good.

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Next steps for the school

Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that:  monitoring activities focus sharply on checking the learning and progress of all pupils and groups of pupils so that teachers receive precise guidance and feedback to be able to challenge and extend pupils’ learning further  lessons are sufficiently challenging to ensure that all pupils, especially the most able, make good progress, particularly in mathematics  teachers consistently use the school’s agreed approaches to providing feedback that helps pupils to improve their work.

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Next steps for the school

I am copying this letter to the Chair of the Governing Body, the Regional Schools Commissioner and the Director of Children’s Services for Wiltshire County Council. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website.

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Information about the inspection

During the inspection, I met with you, other leaders, the Chair of the Governing Body and other governors, and parents at the start of the school day. I also met with your school improvement partner. I spoke with pupils during lessons and at lunchtime and scrutinised the quality of their work. I also took account of seven responses to the staff questionnaire and 28 responses by parents to Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View. I looked at a wide range of evidence relating to safeguarding, the quality of teaching, assessment information and the school’s analysis of attendance and behaviour records.

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