Park View Primary School

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

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Mr David Stephens Headteacher Park View Primary School Park View Road Prestwich Manchester M25 1FA

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Short inspection of Park View Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 18 January 2017, 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 October 2012.

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Short inspection of Park View Primary School

The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. The proportion of children attaining a good level of development in the early years has risen each year, as has the proportion of pupils attaining the expected standard in phonics. Similarly, across the school a higher proportion of pupils in reading, writing and mathematics attain the expected standards for their age.

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Short inspection of Park View Primary School

The school has also improved on the areas identified for improvement at the last inspection. You and other leaders have made sure that pupils are more involved in their learning and use their initiative. Teachers make better checks on pupils’ understanding throughout the lesson. There is a more open learning culture across the school whereby teachers share their expertise and learn from each other.

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Short inspection of Park View Primary School

You, senior leaders and governors have high aspirations for pupils and parents. Parents spoke about a significant change in culture at the school with better communication, better support for pupils and higher visibility of you and the senior leaders. There has been a transformation in the quality of buildings and classrooms in which pupils learn.

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Short inspection of Park View Primary School

You have identified that the attendance of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities needs to be increased and you have started taking some effective action. There is still some more work to do to make sure that this group of pupils is more frequently at school. You have taken action to redeploy staff, change leadership and provision to increase children’s level of development at the end of Reception. There is still more to be done to increase staff expectations and challenge in activities for children. You have made sure that the pupil premium funding has a positive impact on making sure that disadvantaged pupils make at least expected progress across the school. There now needs to be improved targeting of the funding to enable a higher proportion of middle-ability disadvantaged pupils to attain above the standard expected for their age. Teaching and pupils’ outcomes are good in a wide range of subjects, including

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Short inspection of Park View Primary School

art, history and science. For some of the most able pupils, however, the activities in history and science do not reflect the quality of writing or mathematics that the same pupils can produce in English and mathematics.

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Short inspection of Park View Primary School

The leadership team has ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and records are detailed and of high quality. Safeguarding is a high priority. The systems in place to prevent safeguarding issues are effective. Staff are well trained in the different types of child protection and are vigilant, particularly regarding security of the site. There are plenty of staff who have qualifications in paediatric and general first aid. There have been very few serious accidents since the previous inspection and there is always a member of staff with a first aid qualification on school trips and visits. There have been few parental complaints about safety.

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Short inspection of Park View Primary School

Due to staff’s successful preventative work there have been no recorded racist or homophobic incidents and few bullying incidents or issues with pupil-on-pupil cyber, verbal or physical incidents. Staff track pupils’ behaviour well and there is a good system of reintegrating the very few pupils who have been excluded.

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Inspection findings

 Most groups of pupils have good attendance and there are some effective systems in place to keep a check on individual pupil’s absence as well as to promote higher attendance, for example rewards and the chance for the class to play with Parker the bear for the week. Some of the pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities have medical needs and have required some significant absences from school. As a result the attendance figures for this group have been adversely affected. Staff work well with other agencies such as health workers, who readily share information, and attendance specialists to help reduce absence. There is still a need to increase the attendance of pupils without medical needs to make sure that they are able to benefit fully from all of the teaching that happens each week.  Children enter the Nursery and Reception with levels of skills and development that are typical for children of this age. Children’s attainment by the end of

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Inspection findings

Reception has increased significantly over the last four years, which means that teachers in the rest of the school do not have to do so much to catch up lost ground. By the end of the early years, boys’ writing has been below average. You have changed the leadership of the early years and changed the deployment of staff and the environment. You have taken advice and guidance from external specialists, which is having a positive impact on the quality of provision. During the inspection, boys were observed making good progress in their use of language and vocabulary, in developing their imagination and in their writing skills. For example, two boys skilfully selected drawing tools on the interactive whiteboard to draw faces and shapes with fingers on their right and left hands at the same time. Boys’ writing is improving, but there is still some way to go until they have fully caught up with other children nationally. This in part is because

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Inspection findings

some activities are not demanding enough. In the expressive arts room, for example, some of the activities did not do enough to teach all children new skills or ideas.  Pupils who are known to be disadvantaged made at least expected progress in English and mathematics across the school, particularly in key stage 1, getting much closer to the attainment of their peers by the end of Year 2. This is partly because the pupil premium funding has been used wisely to enable lower- attaining pupils to make accelerated progress. However, in Year 1 there has been a three-year decline in the proportion of disadvantaged pupils attaining the expected standard when using phonics to read and spell. The evidence suggests that pupils in the current Year 1 are more able in their use of phonics. There is also evidence that by the end of Year 2 disadvantaged pupils and boys are catching up lost ground. There is still some work to do by staff across key stage

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Inspection findings

2 to target the pupil premium funding to those pupils who are middle- and high- ability so that a higher proportion attain above expected standards for their age by the end of year 6.  Pupils’ work indicates that the curriculum has a good impact on most-able pupils in English and mathematics and in art and design. They develop and use their growing vocabulary and knowledge of sentence structures and consolidate their knowledge of how to solve mathematical calculations. Similarly, they use and develop some very good drawing and sketching skills. Despite these pupils having advanced English and mathematics skills, they are not using these in their history, geography and science work. In these subjects the activities ask for only simple graphs and charts, or only simple labels, captions and phrases.  You and senior leaders are clearly passionate about the pupils and parents in the school and have led changes for the better that have improved the school’s

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Inspection findings

relationship with parents, staff relationships with leaders, and pupils’ achievement. The governors are very knowledgeable, ambitious and articulate. They have a good strategic overview as well as a detailed knowledge of the assessment information and the quality of teaching.

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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

 pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities attend more frequently  the attainment of boys in the early years increases so that more attain the early learning goals and a good level of development  the pupil premium grant is used more precisely to enable a higher proportion of disadvantaged pupils to attain the highest standards across subjects  pupils’ work in history, geography and science is more challenging and better reflects pupils’ standards in English and mathematics.

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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 Bury. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website.

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Information about the inspection

I met with you and senior leaders to discuss my lines of enquiry, the progress the school has made since the previous inspection and the quality of safeguarding.

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Information about the inspection

To gather information about teaching and standards, I completed six observations of teaching with the deputy headteacher. Thirty-five staff completed Ofsted’s online survey. I looked through some of the work completed by the most able pupils from each class. Twenty-two pupils completed Ofsted’s online survey.

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Information about the inspection

I met with two representatives of the local authority and with five members of the governing body.

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Information about the inspection

To gather the views of parents I looked at the 62 responses to Ofsted’s online Parent View questionnaire and spoke with eight parents who arrived at the school wishing to speak with me.

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