Meadowfield Primary School

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

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Mrs Helen Stout Headteacher Meadowfield Primary School Halton Moor Avenue Leeds West Yorkshire LS9 0JY

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Short inspection of Meadowfield Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 16 November 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 March 2013.

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Short inspection of Meadowfield Primary School

The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You, together with the rest of the staff, have created a culture that has nurture and quality relationships as the bedrock of all you do. One parent spoke for many when stating staff ‘care about the whole child, knowing them as individuals and caring about them as a person’. This caring and nurturing approach means that pupils are well prepared for learning.

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Short inspection of Meadowfield Primary School

You have created a ‘no excuses’ culture and successfully focus on helping pupils overcome potential barriers to learning. These high aspirations permeate throughout the whole staff. Staff realise that the buck stops with them if pupils are not achieving well. Your ‘impact conversations’ with staff regularly hold them to account for pupils’ progress. These are proving highly effective in empowering teachers and keeping teachers focused on making sure pupils make good progress.

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Short inspection of Meadowfield Primary School

You have taken sensible steps to increase the involvement all teachers have in checking the quality of teaching across the school. This is helping teachers improve their own teaching, especially those who are teaching a new class. As a result, staff morale is very high and they rightly praise the quality of leadership across the school.

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Short inspection of Meadowfield Primary School

You and your team have a detailed grasp of each pupil’s specific needs. You are also sensitive to the needs of the local community. As a result, you have created an engaging and exciting curriculum that is built around the needs of pupils. This provides pupils with an exciting and engaging curriculum and many ‘wow’ moments that they may otherwise not have. These include a wide range of trips and visits that help them learn about the world around them.

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Short inspection of Meadowfield Primary School

Subject leaders have a clear grasp of what is working well and those areas that need to further improve. They effectively check on the quality of teaching and the progress pupils are making. They have played a valuable role in helping the school improve further since the previous inspection.

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Short inspection of Meadowfield Primary School

Governors are rightly proud of their school. They live and breathe the vision to see all pupils overcome potential barriers to learning. As a result, they put the best interests of pupils at the heart of their decision-making. High-quality headteacher’s reports to governors enable them to ask challenging questions. However, governors do not just accept what they are told and regularly visit the school to form their own strategic view of how well the school is doing. Governors have a detailed grasp of how leaders are using additional funding. They have made sure that it is having a significant impact on pupils’ progress.

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Short inspection of Meadowfield Primary School

Staff work tirelessly to ensure that pupils are, and feel, safe. Excellent relationships between staff and pupils mean that pupils feel confident in sharing worries or concerns they may have. Staff are mindful that risks to children could happen anywhere, including their school. As a result, staff remain vigilant and report concerns they have to the designated safeguarding leaders.

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Short inspection of Meadowfield Primary School

Leaders are sensitive to the challenges and needs of their local community. Effective training has been provided in relation to child sexual exploitation, radicalisation and the Department for Education’s latest guidance ‘Keeping children safe in education’. Leaders take effective steps to check that staff have understood and follow the key messages from this training and guidance.

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Short inspection of Meadowfield Primary School

Bullying is rare but is accurately recorded and carefully analysed. Leaders have created a range of effective strategies to help pupils report bullying, including visual ways for younger pupils to share their concerns with teachers. Older pupils are encouraged to talk to other pupils about how their actions make them feel. This approach is helping to prevent repeat incidents of bullying.

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Short inspection of Meadowfield Primary School

Staff work well with a wide range of other agencies and professionals. They ensure that case files are up to date and have clear and detailed records of interactions they have with vulnerable pupils. Leaders have made sure that there are detailed and clear targets to improve vulnerable pupils’ attendance and progress.

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Short inspection of Meadowfield Primary School

In spite of leaders using a wide range of rewards and sanctions to tackle attendance, leaders rightly recognise that attendance is still not good enough. Some pupils are regularly absent from school and this is having a negative impact on the progress they are making.

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Inspection findings

 Despite children starting Nursery with skills well below those typical for their age, children make strong progress over time. The number of children leaving Reception with a good level of development continues to rise year on year and is getting closer to national averages. Leaders have improved provision and provide children with well-structured routines and rich learning experiences. An ever- growing proportion of children are ready for the demands of learning in key stage 1.  Leaders have made significant improvements to both the indoor and outdoor learning environments in both Nursery and Reception. There are now far more genuine opportunities for pupils to develop their language, mark making, and mathematical and gross motor skills. A wide range of interventions, including speech and language support, are helping children develop their communication skills.  Pupils’ outcomes in phonics by the end of key stage 1 continue to improve year

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Inspection findings

on year. Phonics is taught well and systematically on a daily basis. Teachers successfully engage pupils in learning new sounds and use strategies throughout the day to reinforce words or sounds that prove challenging for some pupils. This helps learning ‘stick’ and means that pupils, including those who left Reception without a good level of development, are currently making good progress in phonics.  Leaders recognise that pupils in key stage 1 need to further improve their reading and writing, especially those who are disadvantaged. Effective plans and bespoke interventions are in place. Current in-school assessment information coupled with inspection evidence shows that pupils are making better progress.  Leaders have improved writing opportunities across the curriculum, including in key stage 2. A wide range of trips and visits are being used to provide pupils, especially boys, with exciting reasons to want to write at length. ‘Grammar Gripe’

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Inspection findings

sheets in each pupil’s exercise book provide helpful advice on how pupils can improve their grammar, punctuation and spelling. ‘Catch up, keep up’ sessions are also helping those pupils further improve their phonics skills.  The progress pupils make in mathematics by the end of key stage 2 is not good enough. There are not enough opportunities for pupils to develop and deepen their fluency and reasoning skills. Leaders have started to take effective steps to tackle this. However, leaders have rightly identified this as a key priority for further improvement.

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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

 they devise and implement strategies to improve pupils’ attendance so that it is at least in line with the national average  pupils, especially those who are disadvantaged in key stage 1, further improve their progress in reading and writing  leaders further increase the opportunities pupils have in key stage 2 to develop their mathematical reasoning and fluency skills.

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

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Information about the inspection

During the inspection, I met with you, your two deputy headteachers and a group of middle leaders. I also met with a group of governors. I had a telephone meeting with a local authority officer. Together with you and other leaders, I visited classrooms to observe teaching and look at pupils’ work. I also listened to some pupils read. Consideration was given to 18 free-text responses from Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View, to 31 staff surveys and 49 pupil survey responses. I evaluated recent information in relation to pupils’ progress, the school’s own self- evaluation document, the school improvement plan and a range of documentation about how you keep pupils safe. I also sampled vulnerable children’s case files.

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