Setting

Mrs Elaine Tasker Headteacher Prince Bishop School Saltersgill Avenue Middlesbrough TS4 3JS

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Special measures monitoring inspection of Prince Bishop School

Following my visit to your school on 8 to 9 March 2016, I write on behalf of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills to confirm the inspection findings. Thank you for the help you and your staff gave me during the inspection and for the time that was made available to discuss the actions which have been taken since the school’s previous monitoring inspection.

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Special measures monitoring inspection of Prince Bishop School

This was the fifth monitoring inspection visit since the school became subject to special measures, following the inspection, which took place in December 2013. The full list of the areas for improvement, which were identified during that inspection, is set out in the annex to this letter. The monitoring inspection report is attached.

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Special measures monitoring inspection of Prince Bishop School

Having considered all the evidence I am of the opinion that at this time:

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Special measures monitoring inspection of Prince Bishop School

Leaders and managers are taking effective action towards the removal of special measures.

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Special measures monitoring inspection of Prince Bishop School

The school may appoint newly qualified teachers before the next inspection.

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Special measures monitoring inspection of Prince Bishop 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 Middlesbrough. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website.

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Her Majesty’s Inspector

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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 Improve the quality of teaching and learning so that it is consistently good and enables all students, in all subjects, to be challenged in their learning and reach their full potential by ensuring that: teachers take full account of what each student already knows and can do when planning lessons so that tasks and activities progressively build and extend students’ knowledge and skills marking and feedback to students is consistently good and students respond to corrections and use the advice to inform future work the approach to the teaching of literacy and numeracy in all areas of the curriculum is rigorous and effective to enable students to apply and develop their reading, writing and mathematical skills regular moderation of teacher’s assessments takes place to improve the rigour and accuracy of assessment throughout the school.

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place in September 2014

 Improve students’ behaviour and safety by: ensuring regular and effective training of staff to improve the way students’ behaviour is managed and responded to ensuring behavioural incidents are dealt with in a measured and reasonable way, particularly when the use of physical restraint may be required and that incidents are logged swiftly and evaluated thoroughly in order to bring about improvements to benefit students and staff increasing attendance by setting ambitious targets and working closely with students, their parents, and other agencies, to achieve them.

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 Improve the effectiveness of leadership and management, including the governing body, by: rigorously monitoring the school’s work relating to students’ safety, behaviour and attendance rigorously monitoring the quality of teaching and students’ achievement−ensuring the information gathered is used to provide an accurate self-evaluation of how well the school is performing and taking prompt action to tackle concerns that arise producing an improvement plan that is clearly understood by all staff and that effects rapid and sustainable change in those areas where improvement is urgently required making sure all the additional funding the school receives for disadvantaged students is used effectively and that the requirement to publish a report of the impact of this funding for parents is met ensuring that performance management is rigorous and linked to a coherent approach to the training and development of staff in order to improve

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place in September 2014

students’ progress ensuring the curriculum has breadth and balance and is kept under regular review to ensure that it is well matched to students’ needs and prepares them well for life and work in modern Britain.

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An external review of governance should be undertaken in order to assess how this aspect of leadership and management may be improved.

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An external review of the school’s use of the student premium should be undertaken in order to assess how this aspect of leadership and management may be improved.

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Evidence

There were regular meetings between the inspector and the senior leaders throughout the two day inspection to discuss aspects of leadership and management and any issues emerging from the inspection. Separate discussions were held with the Chair of the Governing Body, two senior officers from the local authority, and the four newly appointed staff with teaching and learning responsibility posts (TLRs). A range of documents relating to the work of the school was read and evaluated. The headteacher and deputy headteacher joined the inspector in visiting almost every class in the school to scrutinise pupils’ workbooks. The inspector and a member of the senior leadership team jointly observed five separate part-lessons. Each observation included a detailed review of pupils’ workbooks, particularly in English and mathematics, discussions with pupils, and a review of teachers’ lesson planning, if available.

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Context

Two members of staff, both absent for extended periods, have left the school. One, a class teacher, has been replaced by an internal appointee. The other, a teaching assistant (TA), has been replaced within the appointment of five new TAs from January 2016. One other member of staff is currently on long-term absence from school, but is expected to return next week.

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Context

The new staffing structure, which was being planned during the previous inspection visit, has now been completed. There is a new assistant headteacher with responsibility for progress and achievement, and four TLRs; one each in mathematics, English and science, and one for quality assurance of teaching and learning across the whole school. Two staff focus groups have also been formed to develop greater staff involvement in monitoring the quality of provision across the school. One group focuses on raising achievement by reviewing pupils’ outcomes and teaching and learning. The second focuses on the school’s identified social quality aspects of safeguarding and behavioural support.

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Context

Two new parent governors and one new teacher governor have joined the governing body.

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Context

A new unit within the school, the Pupil Learning Centre (PLC) is almost ready to open. This specialist facility is targeting those pupils with very challenging learning and behavioural needs and will provide focused support to help them develop their literacy, numeracy and social skills, alongside anger management strategies. These targeted pupils will join their peers in the main school for other lessons in order to ensure they receive their full curricular entitlement. This unit will reduce the reliance on some off-site provision currently being used. The school has recently received a number of new admissions, following a local authority review about placement of pupils from mainstream schools who have specific learning needs resulting from their emotional, social and mental health issues.

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Context

A partnership project with a local university is due to commence in April 2016 and will provide every pupil with a sensory needs profile, alongside occupational therapy for those identified as having complex sensory needs.

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The effectiveness of leadership and management

The overall effectiveness of leadership and management continues to improve. The recent appointment of a new assistant headteacher and four new TLRs has added to the leadership and management capacity to bring about the improvements required. However, these new appointees have yet to develop some important aspects of their work, as an aid to improving the rigour and robustness of leadership and management across all aspects of the school. For example, not all of these new appointees have audited fully the quality of provision in their area of responsibility, and subsequently identified a series of specific priorities and actions to address any identified weaknesses. In addition, the specific roles and responsibilities between these middle leaders and senior staff are still at a very early stage of development, so there is currently a lack of clarity about the strategic working of the full leadership

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The effectiveness of leadership and management

The school continues to use its post-Ofsted action plan, which remains fit for purpose. A recent draft update of this development plan lacks many of the positive features of the existing action plan, particularly in terms of clear referencing to the areas for improvement from the previous inspection report, and clear and measurable criteria by which the priorities and actions can be measured for the impact and success of priorities and actions over the life of the plan.

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The effectiveness of leadership and management

The school self-evaluation is not yet fit for purpose. Although it is at a very early stage of development, it lacks sufficient supportive evidence to justify the self- evaluation grades given. Currently, this document is more rhetorical than evidence- based.

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The effectiveness of leadership and management

Governance in the school continues to improve. A recent update of link governor roles to specific areas of provision within the school makes excellent use of the broad experience and expertise of individual governors. However, although almost all areas of the school’s provision are covered, the highly important aspect of quality assurance, which is the responsibility of one of the newly appointed TLRs currently has no named link governor with whom this member of staff can maintain regular and on-going discussions about the improvements being made in this area. Given the importance of the governing body monitoring, challenge and support of school leaders, as part of its broader quality assurance practices within the school, this is an area which needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

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The effectiveness of leadership and management

The curriculum of the school is continuing to develop. There is now a more secure provision in place for all pupils, but there is still some off-site provision for particularly disaffected pupils, which continues to need robust monitoring to ensure that equality and entitlement of provision for these pupils is maintained across all subject areas.

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment

From a very low base, following the placement of the school in special measures, the quality of teaching has improved significantly over the past 24 months. There is still some inconsistency in the overall quality across the school, but rapid improvement has been achieved in the teaching of the core subjects of English, mathematics and science. Some good quality teaching is seen in other subjects, but senior leaders are aware of the need to ensure greater consistency and quality of provision across all subject areas in order to bring about more rapid improvement in all outcomes for pupils.

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment

Teachers’ expectations of pupils have improved significantly over the past 12 months. This is particularly evident in English and mathematics, where there is now a much better match between the work provided for the pupils and their known prior attainment and ability. With the exception of Year 11, pupils from other year groups, especially Year 10, are making better progress in English and mathematics.

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment

A number of lessons follow a very similar pattern. In some, pupils spend a significant amount of time listening to the teacher verbally sharing a long list of lesson objectives, without any real engagement from the pupils. This strategy does not always work with pupils who have a long history of disengaging from learning extremely quickly, and subsequently present challenging and sometimes aggressive behaviour in the classroom.

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment

Teachers are now more familiar and comfortable with collecting regular assessment information as an aid to providing work that is more challenging for all pupils. There remains some inconsistency across the school in the way in which teachers use this information. A more secure database of pupil performance is helping teachers to plan work that is more challenging.

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment

There is still a significant use of worksheets in a number of subject areas. These are not always used to best effect and some still rely on the very simple skills of cutting, sorting and pasting with a minimum of thinking required from the pupil. However, there are examples, in English in particular, where teachers have skilfully used targeted worksheets to consolidate the pupils’ learning, and thus help them to develop their greater understanding and a better quality of work.

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Personal development, behaviour and welfare

Staff, particularly at senior level, recognise that a significant number of the pupils are capable of presenting extremely challenging and aggressive behaviour when in school. However, ongoing professional training and support to help staff develop their skills and expertise in managing this challenging behaviour, with a minimum of disruption to learning, is beginning to make an impact. Staff are more confident and capable in de-escalating very challenging behaviour. During this two-day inspection monitoring visit, the pupils’ behaviour in and around the school was significantly better than on any previous visit by the inspector to the school. There remains, however, a very high number of fixed-term exclusions which need to be reduced significantly in order to minimise the negative impact on those pupils’ learning. The most recent attendance data show that although some year groups are improving, overall, attendance is still too low. The school’s strategy of pupil withdrawal during

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Personal development, behaviour and welfare

lessons, at the behest of staff, has met with improved success in recent times. However, there is now scope to develop the pupils’ own ability to self-withdraw, under direct supervision, in order to ameliorate any behavioural outbursts, which the pupil knows to be wrong and disruptive to their own and others’ learning.

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Outcomes for pupils

Outcomes for pupils continue to present a challenge for the school. The current Year 11 pupils are not showing enough signs of the rapid improvement required, particularly in the core subjects of English and mathematics. The picture of progress and improving attainment across the rest of the school, particularly in Year 10, is much more positive. The quality of these pupils’ work reflects their prior attainment much more accurately, particularly those who were above average at the end of Key Stage 2. However, this improvement in these two core areas is not yet consistently replicated in all subject areas across the school.

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External support

The external support provided by the local authority and commissioned external consultants continues to be effective in helping the school to make the necessary improvements. Those staff who have received regular and ongoing support have benefited from the experience and expertise of these specialists. This is particularly evident in the three core subjects of English, mathematics and science. However, both the local authority officers and senior leaders, including governors, now need to identify clear exit strategies for this external support in order to ensure that the school becomes self-sustaining and self-sufficient in bringing about the necessary improvements.

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External support

The continuation of the local authority monitoring groups, namely, the progress review group (PRG) and the school support monitoring group (SSMG) continue to make a very positive contribution in holding senior leaders and governors to account for the quality of provision throughout the school.

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