All Saint's Richmond Hill Church of England Primary School

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

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Mr David Pattison Headteacher All Saints’ Richmond Hill Church of England Primary School Cross Aysgarth Mount Leeds West Yorkshire LS9 9AD

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School

Following my visit to the school on 20 March 2018, 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 2013.

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School

The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You have created a calm and nurturing school environment in which pupils are encouraged to achieve their best. As a result, the overall quality of teaching remains good and pupils achieve well over time.

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School

You and your staff know the school inside out. You keep an ever-watchful eye on how well pupils are achieving. This gives you an accurate handle on the strengths and priorities for further improving the school. Your improvement plans are, rightly, focused on a handful of key areas, including further improving pupils’ progress in reading and writing.

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School

However, these plans are not as useful a tool for school improvement as they might be. There are times when targets are woolly and imprecise. This makes it difficult for you and governors to hold some teachers to account or know whether actions are having their intended impact.

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School

The teaching of mathematics is a real strength of the school and pupils continue to make very strong progress. Inspection evidence confirms that current pupils are making good progress, especially in Years 3, 4 and 6.

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School

You have given careful consideration to the workload issues facing your staff. As a result, you have made sensible and practical changes to your assessment policies. This has contributed to a well-motivated staff who feel that their concerns are listened to. Staff feel the school is well led and morale remains high.

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School

Your subject leaders provide good capacity. They too have a clear and accurate grasp of how well teachers are teaching and what needs to improve. Subject leaders are very effective in reviewing the impact of their actions to improve teaching. This provides a useful ‘golden thread’ throughout the year to help them check on the improvements they are making. As a result, the overall quality of teaching remains good.

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School

The leadership team has ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose. You have successfully built a school culture in which keeping children safe is seen as the number one priority. All staff that I spoke with clearly see it as their responsibility to remain vigilant and keep a `keen eye’ on pupils’ well-being. Staff are confident and clear on how to report any concerns they have and know that their concerns are taken seriously.

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School

You and other leaders have given careful thought to the community you serve. This has helped tailor your approach to training staff on safeguarding matters. Recent training for staff on radicalisation and extremism, female genital mutilation and children missing in education has proven very helpful. Staff, rightly, feel more confident in spotting and reporting on these potential safeguarding issues.

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School

Leaders provide good support and help for the most vulnerable pupils in school. Through the use of personalised timetables, good relationship-building with families and effective use of the in-school child and adolescent mental health worker, these vulnerable pupils are kept safe.

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School

You take effective steps to check that staff are suitable to work with pupils in school. Your record of these checks complies with legal requirements. Your safeguarding policies and procedures are regularly reviewed. This is helping you to further sharpen and improve your work, especially in terms of your use of restraint and the administering of medicines to children when in school.

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Inspection findings

 Pupils’ attendance remains above the national average. Pupils enjoy school and value the range of rewards for good attendance, including certificates, trophies and book prizes. Staff work well with families and make regular home visits to check on pupils when they are absent. This helps improve attendance as well as reassure staff that pupils are safe when they are not in school.  Children in Nursery and Reception make good progress. Despite starting points below the typical for their age, children progress well. Staff work hard to successfully overcome a range of potential barriers to learning, including behavioural issues and delays in speech and language development, including for those children who speak English as an additional language.  Staff in Nursery and Reception make good use of their assessments and observations of what children can do. This helps staff spot and build upon children’s interests, making learning more engaging and enjoyable. As a result,

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Inspection findings

learning environments are regularly updated and refreshed. This provides authentic learning opportunities in reading, mark-making and number.  Current in-school information coupled with inspection evidence suggest that pupils are making good progress. Staff teach phonics in an effective, consistent and enthusiastic manner. Leaders know their pupils really well. Through the use of carefully selected teaching groups, staff are able to aim their phonics teaching to the specific needs of each pupil. Pupils who speak English as an additional language are making good progress with their reading. Although the outcomes in phonics in 2017 dipped, this was due to specific cohort issues.  Current in-school information shows that pupils are making good progress in their reading. Leaders have taken very effective steps to improve their teaching of guided reading. Through a range of different teaching approaches, pupils

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Inspection findings

successfully develop their skills and confidence in reading.  Pupils are currently making good progress in writing. However, pupils do not have enough opportunities to write at length across the wider curriculum. Work over time also shows that there is sometimes insufficient challenge in some ‘themes’, including in science and history.  Pupils, including disadvantaged pupils, continue to make very strong progress in mathematics. This is because there are plenty of opportunities for pupils to practise their reasoning skills, deal with word problems and regularly make connections between different mathematical learning. Teachers use a range of imaginative approaches to encourage pupils to tackle more challenging work successfully.  Governors have a good strategic overview of the school. They regularly review and discuss the school’s own self-evaluation and review the various improvement plans. However, they do not have a good enough handle on the

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Inspection findings

impact that additional funding is having on disadvantaged pupils and the impact of primary school physical education and sport premium funding. This is partly due to the fact that these improvement plans lack clear and precise details of the intended impact of this additional funding.

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Next steps for the school

Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that:  pupils have more opportunities for extended writing across the wider curriculum  teachers provide pupils with greater levels of challenge in theme topics  improvement plans clearly show the timescales for when actions will occur and the intended impact they will have on both pupils and staff.

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Next steps for the school

I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the director of education for the Diocese of Leeds (CofE), 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 deputy headteacher and assistant headteacher. I also met with a group of subject leaders and a group of governors and had a telephone conversation with a local authority officer. Together with your senior leaders, we visited classrooms to observe teaching and to look at pupils’ work. I listened to pupils reading. Consideration was given to eight free-text responses from Ofsted’s online questionnaire Parent View, to 33 pupil surveys and 26 staff 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 some vulnerable children’s case files.

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