Anglesey Primary School

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

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Susan Hughes Headteacher Anglesey Primary School Anglesey Street Birmingham West Midlands B19 1RA

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Short inspection of Anglesey Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 18 January 2017 with Rob Hackfath, HMI, 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 January 2012.

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Short inspection of Anglesey Primary School

The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You have put in place robust succession planning arrangements to maintain consistency in the quality of teaching and learning at Anglesey. You provide teachers with the professional development and training to prepare them well to take on leadership roles within the school. This means that the school continues to build on its strengths and offer pupils a good education.

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Short inspection of Anglesey Primary School

Senior leaders display a steadfast commitment to providing memorable and enjoyable experiences that encourage pupils to engage fully in their learning. Pupils spoke excitedly about lessons in different subjects, and a curriculum enriched by visits and visitors. For example, pupils told inspectors about their involvement in projects with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and how they are more inspired to learn. Leaders ensure that disadvantaged pupils can also participate in visits and wider experiences. This has a positive effect on disadvantaged pupils’ progress in writing and mathematics, which is higher than other pupils nationally.

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Short inspection of Anglesey Primary School

Senior leaders have created an inclusive ethos in the school, where everyone is respected and valued. Staff and pupils alike work collaboratively to achieve success. The sense of team work creates a tangible community atmosphere and leads to strong relationships and a happy place to learn. Since the last inspection, the school has established a successful resourced provision for pupils who have speech, language and communication difficulties. You have been successful in maintaining and building on many strengths identified at the last inspection. You have also tackled effectively the areas for improvement previously identified.

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Short inspection of Anglesey Primary School

Pupils show high levels of independence in using and applying the skills that they learn. Leaders have improved access to technology for pupils and developed the computing curriculum well. Resources are used to good effect to support learning. For example, pupils develop and evaluate educational computer games and capture their learning experiences in the form of blogs on the school’s website.

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Short inspection of Anglesey Primary School

Teaching in core subjects enables pupils to continue to make good progress. Progress by the end of key stage 2 has improved over time, particularly in writing. Attainment and progress in mathematics continues to be strong. Pupils are given a range of opportunities to write for different purposes and practise their writing skills. As a result, attainment is now above the national average in writing by the end of key stage 2. While younger pupils make progress from low starting points, there is still further work to be done to ensure that more key stage 1 pupils attain the new, and more challenging, national standards in reading, writing and mathematics. However, leaders know this and are already successfully implementing plans to address this area for improvement.

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Short inspection of Anglesey Primary School

School leaders take effective measures to keep pupils safe from harm. All those that work with pupils receive appropriate training so they know what to do if they are concerned that a pupil is at risk of harm. Leaders ensure that all staff and volunteers are appropriately checked to reduce the risk of unsuitable people having access to pupils. Those responsible for safeguarding regularly evaluate systems and processes, revising procedures when necessary. The leadership team has ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and records are detailed and of high quality. Staff report any concerns they have for a pupil’s welfare quickly, and prompt action is taken where necessary. All parents who completed the Ofsted online questionnaire, Parent View, as well as parents who spoke to inspectors, said that pupils were safe in school.

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Short inspection of Anglesey Primary School

The school’s safeguarding culture permeates all aspects of school life, from arrival at school through to supervision of pupils and how to stay safe beyond the school gate. The curriculum contributes well to pupils’ preparedness for keeping safe. Pupils talk confidently about the different ways they protect themselves from harm. They understand the risks involved in going online because of effective teaching in school about e-safety. Pupils also know how to stay safe outside school and have a good knowledge about road safety, strangers and first aid. The school website includes a useful page for parents on safeguarding devices at home.

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Inspection findings

 Leaders accurately identify where the school performs well and what it needs to do to improve further. They recognise any emerging issues quickly and make necessary changes to provision to ensure that pupils achieve well. For example, leaders identified and remedied the causes of the dip in key stage 2 writing results in 2015. This brought about a sharp rise in the proportion of pupils making good progress in writing and attaining at greater depth in 2016. However, leaders do not consistently write plans with clear goals and success criteria. As a result, governors are not always able to monitor precisely the effectiveness of leaders’ actions against pupil outcomes.  Teachers keep a long-term view of the progress that individual pupils make through the use of ‘personal profile’ files. These files give a clear indication of good progress over time, especially in writing. They are less successful in

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Inspection findings

capturing the shades of improvement in pupils’ reading. Leaders have less information about how pupils are achieving in subjects beyond the core.  Teachers hold effective termly pupil progress meetings where they identify pupils at risk of falling behind in reading, writing and mathematics. Next steps and actions are agreed to help overcome any barriers to progress. These are successful in targeting the right support for pupils so they can begin to catch up. Leaders evaluate the performance of groups at a broad level, which can sometimes lead to generalisations. Analysis of assessment information requires some refinement so that support for pupils can be even better targeted.  Governors challenge school leaders and make performance comparisons with similar schools to help measure the school’s success. They visit the school regularly and know what works well. However, they cannot always hold leaders

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Inspection findings

to account fully because improvement plans do not consistently specify the key outcomes expected.  Leaders of literacy identify barriers that prevent progress in reading matching those in writing and mathematics by the end of key stage 2. Pupils show positive attitudes to reading and most can talk about favourite authors. Reading interventions, including the school’s new systematic approach to comprehension, are regularly checked to see if they are making a difference. The use of aspirational texts in key stage 2, for example plays by Shakespeare, provide a good level of challenge. However, there are some inconsistencies in the school’s approach to promoting enjoyment and the purpose of reading.  Attendance for all pupils remains below the national average. Leaders monitor attendance rigorously and take practical steps to tackle the challenge of absenteeism and support pupils who do not attend regularly. They have a clear

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Inspection findings

and detailed understanding of the reasons why some pupils do not attend school regularly. Pupils are motivated by rewards to promote attendance.  Leaders prepare pupils well for life in modern Britain through a diverse and rich curriculum. Younger pupils enjoy rewards for demonstrating key British values through their day-to-day interactions. Older pupils are involved in making democratic decisions. For example, the school’s behaviour policy reflects pupils’ ideas about how behaviour should be managed. Leaders are less able to determine how successful their work is in developing pupils’ attitudes. However, leaders’ checks on pupil behaviour records show that pupils have high levels of tolerance and respect for one another.  The culture of safeguarding pupils pervades all of the school’s practices. Staff are confident in their identification of concerns, and the culture encourages discussion and sharing of information to keep pupils safe. The school successfully

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Inspection findings

focuses on building pupils’ resilience to help protect them from harm.

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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

 progress in reading improves so that it matches the high rates achieved in writing and mathematics by the end of key stage 2  leaders sharpen the priorities and expected outcomes in the school development plan so that governors can more effectively hold leaders to account  leaders improve systems to assess the progress pupils make in subjects beyond the core.

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

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Information about the inspection

The inspection focused on specific lines of enquiry about:

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Information about the inspection

 how well leaders evaluate the performance of pupils and use this to inform their plans  the effectiveness of the teaching of reading  how well the school promotes good attendance  the effectiveness of the school’s promotion of fundamental British values  the effectiveness of safeguarding and how aware pupils are of keeping themselves safe in a range of situations

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Information about the inspection

During the inspection we held discussions with you about the school’s evaluation of its effectiveness. I met with a group of senior leaders to discuss reading. I also held a meeting with governors and spoke on the telephone to your school improvement partner. We joined you and other leaders in short visits to lessons, where we spoke to pupils about their work and sampled some of their personal profiles.

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Information about the inspection

I listened to pupils read and also had a discussion with a group of key stage 2 pupils. We evaluated a range of documents, including the school’s development plan and records about keeping pupils safe. The views of parents were considered through the 13 responses to Parent View, Ofsted’s online questionnaire.

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