Moat Community College

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

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Mr B Killeen Moat Community College Maidstone Road Leicester Leicestershire LE2 0TU

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Short inspection of Moat Community College

Following my visit to the school on 31 January 2018 with Claire Shepherd and Richard Vasey, Ofsted Inspectors, 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 2014.

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Short inspection of Moat Community College

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

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Short inspection of Moat Community College

Since taking up your post in September 2015, you have had a positive impact on the school and you have identified the changes necessary to ensure that improvements take place rapidly. You provide strong and confident leadership and a clear sense of direction. You have the full support of the staff and you are assisted by a strong leadership team. A culture of ambition and aspiration is developing in the school, which is helping to improve outcomes for pupils and students. Governors are skilled and well-informed and therefore provide you with a good balance of support and challenge.

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Short inspection of Moat Community College

Your self-evaluation is detailed and accurate. You precisely assess what is working well and those areas of the school that need to be strengthened. You have clearly identified the priorities for the school and have put in place the required actions. You have also identified a range of strategies aimed at bringing about further improvements and you have wisely developed partnerships with other schools, along with the help of the local authority to strengthen the quality of teaching and the curriculum.

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Short inspection of Moat Community College

Due to your focus on improving the quality of teaching and learning, GCSE outcomes improved considerably in 2017, with pupils now making progress similar to pupils nationally. In part, this is because of pupils’ excellent performance in science, which is a real strength of the school. Standards improved in nearly all subject areas; nevertheless, more work is needed to ensure that pupils’ outcomes, especially in history and geography, match the improvements evident elsewhere.

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Short inspection of Moat Community College

At the last inspection, the school was asked to increase the challenge for the most able pupils. The school’s hard work in this area is paying off, demonstrated in the increased number of pupils achieving the very highest grades in their GCSEs last year. The previous inspection report also called for the school to provide pupils with more opportunities to develop literacy across a range of subjects. You said you have put literacy at the ‘heart of everything the college does’, and inspectors saw many examples of this during our visit.

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Short inspection of Moat Community College

Throughout the school, it was evident that most pupils behave respectfully and conduct themselves well. You and your team have worked hard to ensure that pupils understand and demonstrate the school’s values of learning excellence, responsibility, respect, honesty and kindness. As a result the school is a calm and purposeful community. As one pupil told us, ‘school has a great sense of equity’.

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Short inspection of Moat Community College

Leaders and governors focus on ensuring that pupils’ well-being and safety are paramount. This is reflected in the thorough safeguarding arrangements and detailed recruitment checks, which are fit for purpose. Leaders have built a strong and vigilant safeguarding culture through comprehensive safeguarding training, for example, most recently on ‘peer on peer abuse’.

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Short inspection of Moat Community College

Staff act promptly when dealing with safeguarding issues, and draw on external support in a timely manner. Leaders ensure that all pupils learn well and make progress. This is possible because of the effective use of information by a range of teams across the school who make links between attendance, absence, safeguarding concerns and pupils’ progress.

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Short inspection of Moat Community College

Pupils were able to speak about the range of information that is shared with them about how to keep safe in the local area and further afield. They learn about this in tutor time, personal development education lessons and in assemblies. An example of this was seen during our visit where the local police delivered an assembly on child sexual exploitation. Pupils are confident that they feel safe at school and know how to keep safe, including when online. Pupils speak about the wealth of support that staff offer them. Pupils say that they know whom to go to if they have a concern, and are confident that their concerns will be dealt with promptly and sensitively. In addition, all parents and carers who completed Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View, agree that their child is safe.

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Inspection findings

 The first key line of enquiry for this inspection focused on the actions the school has taken to make sure improvements continue in all subject areas. Leaders have high aspirations, and you and your leadership team are rightly focused on ensuring that pupils experience good teaching in every lesson. Highly organised systems for monitoring and training are now in place and are used to promote improving outcomes for pupils. You introduced the ‘Moat Way’, which provides a clear set of expectations to help learning. These, along with the training, challenge and support offered to teachers, have been successful in improving the quality of the teaching and its impact on pupils’ learning. During the inspection, inspectors saw teaching which helped pupils to make good progress. However on a few occasions, this did not match the expectations set by your leaders.  Teachers across a range of subjects are making consistent use of assessment

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Inspection findings

information to plan and shape learning. Leaders and teachers ensure that their own assessment of pupils is accurate by checking against teachers’ work in other schools. Current school data indicates that pupils are making faster progress in most subjects than in previous years. You have addressed the staffing issues in humanities but you also recognise that there is the urgent need for faster progress to be made so that pupils can catch up.  Middle leaders play an important part in the improvement of the school. They are closely involved in ensuring that teaching and learning in their areas are as good as possible. They are confident to share their ideas, skills and effective practice and are increasing using this to further improve practice within and between subject areas.  The second line of enquiry considered the progress of disadvantaged pupils. In 2017, the progress made by disadvantaged pupils by the end of key stage 4

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Inspection findings

showed clear improvements on previous years. The school’s systems for tracking how well pupils are doing shows that the progress of current disadvantaged pupils is improving further, including in mathematics and English. Work seen in pupils’ books demonstrates that disadvantaged pupils are working well and are on course to meet their attainment targets.  Leaders ensure that the additional funding to support disadvantaged pupils is spent efficiently. They make sure that barriers to pupils’ progress are eliminated and that they have the same opportunities as other pupils. However, the achievements of pupils in Year 7 who need to catch up are not measured effectively so that they are able to make more rapid progress. The attendance of disadvantaged students is good and similar to that of other pupils.  Our final area of focus was on fixed-term exclusions. We found that, since the last inspection, the proportion of pupils excluded has continued to reduce

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Inspection findings

although this is still higher than the national average. Leaders, along with the help of governors, have worked hard to improve communication and relationships with families in the community and this has been successful in reducing the number of exclusions. You share our concerns about the over-representation of boys among those that have been excluded. The introduction of your internal exclusion unit is helping to target pupils, and early indications from your current records give cause for cautious optimism.

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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

 systems already in place to improve the quality of teaching and learning are applied more consistently across the school and best practices are shared more effectively  there is further development of strategies to reduce the number of fixed-term exclusions.

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Next steps for the school

I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body and the director of children's services for Leicester. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website.

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Information about the inspection

During the inspection, inspectors met with you, your vice-principals, senior leaders, a representative from the local authority and seven members of the governing body, including the chair. We met with middle leaders and pupils from across both key stages to hear their views of the school. We also spoke with pupils about their learning in the lessons and looked in their books. We evaluated safeguarding procedures, including policies for keeping children safe, training, safeguarding checks and record-keeping. We considered a range of school documentation, including the school’s self-evaluation, pupil assessment reports and behaviour and attendance information. Inspectors gathered the views of staff through meetings and surveys, with 52 responses received. We also considered the views of parents and received 69 responses to the parent survey.

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