Wembley Primary School

Store Street Manchester M1 2WD T: 0300 123 1231 Textphone: 0161 618 8524 enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk www.ofsted.gov.uk

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Mr Robert Fenton Headteacher Wembley Primary School East Lane Wembley HA9 7NW

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Short inspection of Wembley Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 8 March 2016 with Paula Craigie, Ofsted Inspector, 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 the school was judged to be good in July 2011.

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Short inspection of Wembley Primary School

The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Staff, pupils and parents are united behind your ‘no excuses’ vision where all pupils aim to achieve their best. This is summed up best by the school’s aim, ‘Like the phoenix we rise to our challenges, strengthen our learning and shine in our community.’

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Short inspection of Wembley Primary School

As a staff team you have worked hard to engage with parents. This has been extremely successful. Parents speak about how involved they feel in the life of the school and their child’s education. Parents regularly attend school events and workshops. For example, during the week of the inspection, 115 parents attended Mother’s day events in the school. Children from the early years baked biscuits and put on a special assembly for parents. This successful partnership with parents does not end in the early years, it continues as pupils move through the school. The school has maintained its previous strength in pastoral support and care. Parents commented on the efforts of staff to help pupils overcome barriers to learning. One parent explained, ‘The staff are life savers’ as she described how the school’s work had supported her child and helped improve the family’s life at home.

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Short inspection of Wembley Primary School

Inspectors met a wide range of parents during the inspection. The most consistent message we were told was, ‘My child is very happy at school.’ This was also confirmed by Ofsted’s online survey, Parent View.

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Short inspection of Wembley Primary School

You have ensured that the school is a very orderly environment. Pupils have self- respect, which enables them to respect their friends. They show respect and consideration for the school building and everything it offers them. Pupils take responsibility for themselves and keep their possessions tidy in cloakrooms. As pupils move around the school there is a sense of calm and serenity. Pupils, parents and staff talk of the improvements that have been made in behaviour over the past few years. This has helped to ensure that pupils’ conversations in class are focused on learning. Pupils around the school were observed discussing their work with enthusiasm. They were keen to improve their learning and support their peers to do so.

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Short inspection of Wembley Primary School

Support staff around the school are very well deployed within classrooms. They are focused on supporting pupils in their learning, but they also allow pupils to attempt work before intervening or questioning them. They are skilful in their questioning and help to deepen the quality of work pupils achieve in lessons.

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Short inspection of Wembley Primary School

Your development of the school’s curriculum has ensured that there are high ambitions for what pupils can achieve. You are clear that all pupils, regardless of their background, will achieve good levels of progress academically and socially. The curriculum is ambitious for pupils; it is relevant and responsive to pupils’ needs and interests. This is equally true of the early years curriculum. For example, during the inspection it began to snow. Children in the early years were highly excited by this uncommon event. Staff and children went outside to look at the snow. They discussed how it was melting on the ground and in their hands. Excellent learning emerged, as one pupil said, ‘I thought it was spring, but it can’t be, it is snowing.’ As a result, pupils learned that it can snow at any time of the year providing it is cold enough.

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Short inspection of Wembley Primary School

Leaders have successfully tackled the areas for improvement in Ofsted’s previous inspection report in July 2011. Mathematics, previously a weakness, is now a significant strength in the school’s work with pupils. Pupils’ attainment and progress in mathematics is good throughout the school.

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Short inspection of Wembley Primary School

Leaders ensure that the school actively works to keep all pupils in their care safe. Staff have been fully trained in child protection and the full range of safeguarding concerns they may encounter in their work. They fully understand their responsibilities, including the new duties regarding female genital mutilation and preventing extremism and radicalisation.

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Short inspection of Wembley Primary School

Leaders respond quickly when concerns are raised by pupils, parents or staff. A wide range of support is put into place for pupils and families where concerns exist. This rigour is evident in the school’s work to protect children, from high-level safeguarding concerns through to their work to improve individual pupils’ punctuality and attendance.

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Short inspection of Wembley Primary School

The school effectively promotes high expectations for attendance. Following a slight decline in attendance in 2015, leaders rightly recognised the need to further raise the profile of attendance. Pupils speak with pride at their achievement of 100% attendance and being recognised for their efforts with a teddy bear, called ‘the ted award’. Similarly, attendance also has a high profile with weekly attendance figures for each class being on classroom doors and high attendance celebrated in assemblies and newsletters. As a result, attendance this year has recovered from the decline seen in 2015. It is now at the national average for 2015 and persistent absence is well below national figures. However, leaders rightly acknowledge there is still work to do to ensure that the vast majority of pupils attend at least in line with the national average.

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Inspection findings

 Leaders have high expectations of the behaviour and conduct of pupils. They are quick to deal with instances of misbehaviour and successfully involve parents where there are concerns. Fixed-term exclusions have been used for more serious instances of misbehaviour since the last inspection. However, this is now rarely used due to the success of improving the behaviour of individual pupils over time.  Instances of bullying, using racist, homophobic or derogatory language, have significantly fallen since the last inspection. Leaders have made these improvements through responding rigorously to instances of such behaviour. They have also adapted the school’s curriculum so pupils more explicitly consider bullying and derogatory language in personal, social, health and citizenship education. They now have a very clear understanding that such behaviour has consequences and that it does not uphold the school’s values of tolerance, consideration or respect.

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Inspection findings

 Pupils, parents and staff are nearly all highly positive about the school’s work to improve behaviour and deal with bullying. Inspectors agree that this previous strength of the school has been maintained.  Teachers skilfully challenge pupils’ mathematical knowledge to develop their reasoning skills. This enables pupils to increasingly develop a sophistication in considering how they solve problems and why they use particular methods to do so. Older pupils develop an appreciation for using the most efficient methods of calculation and have excellent oral skills to justify their thinking. This stands pupils in good stead for the Key Stage 3 mathematics curriculum.  Teaching, learning and outcomes in the early years have improved. While not all children achieve a good level of development (the skills expected by the time children are five years old), they make good and often better progress during their time in the Nursery and Reception Years. Children

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Inspection findings

make this progress due to exciting learning opportunities, both inside the classroom and in the outdoor area. Staff are responsive to the interests and needs of individuals and groups of children. For example, they recently hooked children’s interest in traditional stories with an overnight visit from the big bad wolf. He blew down the three little pigs’ house in the classroom. Staff use skilful questioning to deepen and extend children’s learning, both during more formal teaching and when children play.  The involvement of parents in the early years plays a key role in helping children progress well from the start of their school career. Parents talked with pride at the difference that attending the workshops the school provides make to them as individuals and to their ability to support their children at home.  Staff in the early years are quick to challenge the early development of gender stereotypes. For example, staff explained expertly that boys and

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Inspection findings

girls can play with all toys, when some children said the garage was only for boys. This demonstrates the school’s culture of equal opportunities and challenge for any possible discrimination.  Leaders carefully scrutinise pupils’ assessment information to ensure that they have an accurate understanding of the quality of the school’s work. They are aware that writing is a key area for further improvement. Leaders have already begun to successfully improve the outcomes for pupils across the school. For example, in 2015 too few pupils achieved Level 3 in writing. Leaders carefully considered how to increase the progress of pupils and have carefully matched staff and interventions to boost the quality of pupils’ writing. This has ensured that pupils have made strong progress this academic year.  Equally, pupils’ handwriting, spelling, presentation and vocabulary develop well as a result of good teaching.

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Inspection findings

 Leaders accept that while nearly all pupils now make good progress in writing, the proportion of pupils making accelerated progress is not yet consistent. In particular, when comparing the progress of Black Caribbean boys to Black Caribbean girls, too few make greater than expected progress.  The school has been highly successful in its work with pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and those who have special educational needs or disability. These pupils make good progress across the curriculum in comparison to their peers nationally and in school, especially across Key Stage 2.  Pupils make good progress in developing their knowledge of science during their time at the school. However, leaders and governors are aware that the development of scientific skills is not as strong through the school. For example, the ability to plan, hypothesise or develop scientific conclusions following experiments.

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Next steps for the school

Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that:

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Next steps for the school

 boys from a Black Caribbean heritage are helped to make similarly strong progress as Black Caribbean girls  pupils make at least good progress in developing practical science skills, such as predicting, hypothesising, conducting experiments and drawing scientific conclusions.

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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 the London Borough of Brent. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website.

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Information about the inspection

During the inspection, inspectors met with you, your senior leaders and other staff, including middle leaders. We met with the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Governing Body. Inspectors visited a range of classrooms from the school’s Nursery class to Year 6. Some visits were made with yourself and other senior leaders. Inspectors also visited a range of classrooms on their own to consider typical behaviour across the school and to scrutinise pupils’ work. Inspectors evaluated the school’s most recent information on the progress of pupils, attendance and punctuality. We reviewed the school’s records of bullying, racist and homophobic incidents and exclusions. The 38 responses to Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View, and 14 responses from the staff questionnaire were also taken into account.

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