Nursteed Community Primary School

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

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Mr Tim Heath Headteacher Nursteed Community Primary School Brickley Lane Devizes Wiltshire SN10 3BF

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Short inspection of Nursteed Community Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 2 November 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 the school was judged to be good in November 2011.

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Short inspection of Nursteed Community Primary School

The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection.

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Short inspection of Nursteed Community Primary School

 Under your leadership, Nursteed Primary school has continued to flourish. The values of honesty, determination, passion, respect, self-belief and teamwork permeate the work of the school. Pupils, teachers, parents and governors are proud to be part of the school’s community.  You and your leadership team have a common drive towards excellence, with an ambition to improve further the quality of education provided by your school. You have addressed effectively the areas highlighted for development at the previous inspection. For example, the teaching of mathematics is a growing strength and pupils tackle problems enthusiastically. Pupils are aware of their next steps in learning and know how well they are progressing.  You, your governors and the leadership team have an accurate view of the strengths and areas to develop further in the school. You rightly promote writing as being strong. However, you have correctly prioritised improving the learning of

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Short inspection of Nursteed Community Primary School

the disadvantaged pupils.  The governing body provides high-quality support and rigorously challenges school leaders. Leaders work well with external agencies. In particular, they work well with specialist services when making difficult decisions about the best interests in caring for pupils. The governing body has responded well to recent external advice to seek regularly the views of school leaders and parents. This enables governors to obtain an independent view in order to question school leaders rigorously about the quality of pupils’ progress, care and attendance. Members of the governing body have a useful range of expertise which supports the school well.  Parents say that communication with the school is very effective. They appreciate how well the school keeps them informed about their child’s progress. Parents praise highly how responsive you and your leaders are when they contact you with a concern.

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Short inspection of Nursteed Community Primary School

 You and your teachers have planned a curriculum which is well balanced and provides excitement and intrigue. Teachers are able to use their own interests to be creative and challenge pupils well. Pupils are very much involved in what they learn, either working with others or on their own.  You have very successfully developed a strong and talented group of school leaders. Under your guidance, they significantly improve the school. You rightly use the knowledge and skills of the leadership team to help other local schools, for example to support the development of their pupils’ writing skills.

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Short inspection of Nursteed Community Primary School

A strong culture of safeguarding exists, with a shared understanding of the need to be vigilant in protecting pupils against all possible risks. Staff know their pupils and families well and routinely keep leaders informed about any concerns.

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Short inspection of Nursteed Community Primary School

All safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and records are detailed and accurate. Policies and procedures are up to date and firmly adhered to. Recent staff training means that staff are clear about how safeguarding practice has an impact on their work. This includes making sure that all staff understand their role in the prevention of pupils being influenced by extremism and radicalisation.

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Short inspection of Nursteed Community Primary School

You and your governing body effectively monitor policies and procedures which keep pupils safe. This includes the careful vetting of staff prior to their recruitment.

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Short inspection of Nursteed Community Primary School

The pupils I spoke to during my visit and the responses to the pupils’ survey confirmed that they feel safe in school. They know that there are adults to talk to who will help them if they have a concern or worry. While they are aware that bullying rarely occurs, they know that it is dealt with well. As a consequence of a recent e-safety week, pupils clearly understand how to keep themselves safe when using the internet or social networking sites.

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Inspection findings

 You have created a culture of the highest expectations of teaching and leadership, which has been, and continues to be, central to the school’s improvement. Leaders work effectively as a team to drive school improvement. This leads to all staff having the highest expectations for pupils’ behaviour and learning. New teachers respond quickly to deliver high-quality teaching. Consequently, teaching, learning and assessment remain securely good.  In the most recent national tests, your most-able pupils achieved and progressed as well as their peers nationally. This is because teachers challenge them to deepen their thinking and share their understanding. School leaders provide opportunities for the most able to work with similar-ability pupils from other local schools, such as working together on demanding mathematics games and problems.  You use the pupil premium funds in a targeted way for the benefit of pupils who

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Inspection findings

are disadvantaged. The majority of this funding employs staff to provide additional teaching of mathematics, reading and writing. Your in-school assessment shows that most disadvantaged pupils make progress broadly in line with others but that not enough are achieving the possible higher standard. For these pupils, attendance is lower than the rest of the school. The few most-able disadvantaged pupils are encouraged to develop their talents and broaden their ambition well, such as in contributing their expertise to the school newspaper.  Writing is a strength of the school of which you and your teachers are rightly proud. By the end of key stage 2, pupils confidently select correct grammar and choose words that match the purpose of the writing and intended audience. The high standards of handwriting support pupils to write well. From Reception, teachers show pupils how to write neatly and expect them to produce high-

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Inspection findings

quality work throughout the school.  Pupils read widely, regularly and enjoy talking about their favourite authors. They read aloud with enthusiasm, using the punctuation well to guide how to read with meaning. For the pupils that make slower progress in reading, you use additional adults effectively to tackle their specific difficulties. The school achieves an effective balance between giving pupils time to read in school and on their own. Pupils often choose books that interest them, sometimes from a topic they are studying in school, such as when reading about historic and scientific facts and problems. This results in progress in reading being good, and many pupils, including the most able, are avid readers.  You and your staff identified that pupils needed more opportunities to use mathematics to solve problems and to explain their reasons for the choices they made. This has resulted in pupils of all ages having confidence in applying skills

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Inspection findings

they have learned, correcting their own mistakes and having a deeper understanding of important mathematical ideas. Pupils achieve good standards in mathematics and the subject is a growing strength of the school.  Many pupils enthusiastically take part in the wide range of extra-curricular opportunities and parents appreciate the high reputation the school has for its drama, art and sport. You have used the sport funding well to make sure that pupils are able to try a wide range of sports. Teachers celebrate pupils’ successes outside of the school curriculum. For example, pupils who learned computer coding themselves have taught other pupils some simple programming skills.  You rightly identified that building strong working partnerships with the nursery schools from which most children come before they start the school was very important. This has resulted in children starting the school with improved skills,

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Inspection findings

especially in early writing. The well-planned curriculum and good teaching results in children, including boys, making good progress through Reception into Year 1. Pupils do well in the phonics screening check, with a higher proportion than the national average reaching the expected standard.  The views of the small proportion of parents who responded to ‘Parent View’, the online Ofsted questionnaire, support the overwhelmingly positive responses that the school receives from the surveys it carries out. One parent described the school as a ‘vibrant hub of learning where the children are valued as a whole child.’

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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

 more pupils, especially those who are disadvantaged, reach the higher standard in the key stage 2 tests  the attendance of pupils who are disadvantaged at least matches the high attendance of other pupils.

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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. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website.

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Information about the inspection

I met with you and we discussed the school’s self-evaluation, information about pupils’ progress and attendance, and recent improvements including those highlighted in the previous inspection. I also held discussions with senior and middle leaders and a representation from the governing body. I spoke to your school adviser from the local authority. We visited all the classes and looked at a sample of pupils’ work from early years to the Year 6 pupils who left in 2016. I listened to four pupils read who were from different classes and I spoke to them about their experiences of school life. I looked at the survey results from Parent View, the staff survey and the pupil questionnaire and I considered any comments written on each survey. I also examined the records kept by school leaders concerning the safeguarding of children.

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Information about the inspection

The key lines of enquiry tested on the short inspection were:

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Information about the inspection

 the gaps in attainment of reading from the end of Reception to Year 2, especially for boys  the effect of using the pupil premium grant to improve reading for disadvantaged pupils and whether pupil absence had any effect on this  the reasons behind the progress in writing being slightly stronger than reading or mathematics by the end of Year 6  how effectively the school advocates for children when working in partnership with outside agencies.

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