Setting

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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Miss Jenny Rainbow Marazion Primary School School Lane Marazion Cornwall TR17 0DG

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School

Following my visit to your school on 13 May 2016, I write on behalf of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills to report the inspection findings. Thank you for the help you gave me and for the time you made available to discuss the actions you are taking to improve the school since the most recent section 5 inspection.

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School

The visit was the first monitoring inspection since the school was judged to require improvement following the section 5 inspection in October 2015. It was carried out under section 8 of the Education Act 2005.

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School

Senior leaders and governors are taking effective action to tackle the areas requiring improvement identified at the recent section 5 inspection in order to become a good school.

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School

The school should take further action to:

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School

 ensure that monitoring activities by senior leaders focus explicitly on the impact of teaching on pupils’ learning and achievement.

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Evidence

I met with you, your deputy headteacher, and three members of the governing body, including the chair, to discuss the actions taken since the last inspection. You, your deputy headteacher and I visited classrooms to observe teaching and learning. I observed you providing feedback to two teachers and then spoke with them to explore the support they are receiving. Together, we looked at samples of pupils’ work in different subjects. I talked with some Year 1 pupils to gain their views of the teaching of phonics (the sounds that letters make). I also met with three representatives from the local authority. We scrutinised some key documents, including your monitoring records of teaching over time.

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Context

The number of pupils on roll at the school continues to rise and is now 136. Governors and senior leaders are exploring the possibilities of working as part of a multi-academy trust with local schools.

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Main findings

You have reacted to the recent inspection findings positively and with determination, setting out in a systematic manner to bring about the improvements necessary. You, your staff and governors commit yourselves to providing a happy atmosphere where pupils are ‘living, learning, laughing’, on a daily basis. I saw this quotation, from the school’s website, acted out in everyone’s work throughout the day. Pupils learn in a bright, engaging and vibrant environment. Staff are fully supportive of the direction you set for your school and are pulling together to help pupils enjoy school and do well. The school’s popularity is reflected in the increasing number of parents who are choosing to send their children there.

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Main findings

You are tackling the issues identified at the last inspection successfully. Your policy for marking pupils’ work and involving pupils in reviewing how well they have done is being implemented with a good degree of consistency. The changes you have implemented are improving pupils’ knowledge of their next steps in learning. Pupils know what they are meant to do in lessons and can explain this well. During our joint book scrutiny you identified where feedback to pupils and their responses are leading to greater involvement in their learning and speeding up their progress. Evidence from pupils’ ‘progress books’ demonstrates that feedback is promoting higher quality work. The pupils themselves say that they enjoy being involved in the process and take pleasure in their improved work. The progress books also show how well pupils are now using their core literacy and mathematics skills across a wider range of topics.

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Main findings

Training in the teaching of phonics is helping teachers plan interesting sequences of lessons that are developing pupils’ phonics knowledge well. Year 1 pupils spoke with enthusiasm about their daily phonics sessions and how they are being helped with their reading and writing. Adults lead the way in modelling clearly spoken language and checking carefully for gaps in pupils’ knowledge of different sounds. ‘Phonics is a joy and we do it all the time,’ reported one pupil. You have ensured that phonics teaching permeates all aspects of pupils’ learning, for example when writing about ‘robotics’ or reporting on their observations from a visit to Marazion beach. As a result, outcomes in the year 1 phonics check are projected to be well above the national average in 2016.

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Main findings

Your school improvement plan aligns exactly with the areas of improvement identified in the previous full inspection report. Actions link well to the new cycle of monitoring activities, which check on the developments in the quality of teaching and assessment. Your use of regular, external evaluations is contributing well to the evidence base from which you are judging the rate of improvements. In addition, you are using a broader range of internal school information from which to judge the impact of actions on improvements. Occasionally, records from lesson observations do not focus closely enough on the impact of teaching on pupils’ learning. This was also evident during the feedback you offered to teachers.

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Main findings

Governors are providing you with a healthy degree of challenge. They keep in close touch with you and find out for themselves about the various aspects of the school’s work. Performance management is viewed as a serious but supportive process to make sure the school improves. Governors’ close involvement ensures that they are able to follow up issues from local authority visits to check the actions being taken and their impact. They are familiar with the messages coming through from your detailed leadership reports and can talk knowledgeably about current priorities and next steps. Appropriate plans are in place to explore the options available for the school and to secure future improvements necessary.

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External support

You, your governing body and staff are drawing well on the support provided by a range of external partners. Local authority officers provide valuable external reports, data analysis and training to improve the effectiveness of the teaching of phonics. Meetings of the Penwith Education Trust of schools are helping teachers develop increasingly accurate assessments of pupils’ work across a range of subjects. Following visits by staff to local schools, new approaches to marking are providing clearer information for pupils to help them with their learning. Training from the local authority is ensuring that governors are asking increasingly demanding and pertinent questions and helping to raise expectations further.

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External support

I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children’s services for Cornwall. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website.

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