Bottesford Church of England Primary School

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

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Mrs Louise McGrory Headteacher Bottesford Church of England Primary School Silverwood Road Bottesford Nottingham Nottinghamshire NG13 0BS

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 13 June 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 October 2014.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

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

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

Pupils at the school experience an effective learning environment created by bright, stimulating displays that reflect the high-quality work of the pupils across a broad range of topics. Many classrooms benefit from displays that support pupils in their learning to ensure that they can achieve their best. Pupils are courteous, considerate and respectful of one another. A group of older pupils told me they were particularly proud of a recent model in the playground created by a group of Reception children. They told me it demonstrated that ’everyone can do something’ and ’everyone is valued’.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

Pupils are rightly proud of the school. They enjoy writing about a broad range of topics, which include the effects of water pollution across the globe, Hinduism, Charles Darwin and the impact of plastics in our oceans. They also enjoy the range of sporting opportunities offered by the school and are proud to represent their school at sports fixtures and other events. The broad curriculum helps pupils to achieve well across a range of subjects. This is reflected in the numerous awards achieved by the school, such as the Music Quality Mark, Healthy Schools Award, School Games Mark and Eco-School status.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

Pupils are very positive about the new behaviour system. They spoke enthusiastically about the ‘character team points’ system you recently introduced and how it helps to create a good working ethos in the school. Alongside this, the pupils have a good understanding of the importance of persevering in their learning through your work on promoting a ‘growth mindset’. This means that they are well motivated to do their best and are beginning to understand the importance of being resilient in their learning.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

Your approach to creating the school improvement plan now includes teaching assistants, teachers and the governing body and is effective. It helps to ensure that everyone is aware of how well the school is performing and has a voice in formulating the new plan.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

The governing body now review the school improvement plan regularly. They are involved in some of the monitoring processes, so they can see the impact of your actions for themselves. They hold you and other leaders to account well with challenges of ‘prove it’ and ‘show me’ as a regular feature of meetings. Their ability to challenge the school has further developed as they have attended training on the school’s new electronic system for recording pupils’ progress. This enables them to access and analyse pupils’ performance data for themselves and engage leaders effectively in conversations around progress.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

As a consequence of the newly implemented pupil-progress tracking system, you and your new leadership team now have a much better grasp on how well pupils are achieving and where further support is needed. This has had a significant effect on halting the decline in progress across the school. The school is now able to focus effective additional individualised support to ensure that pupils remain on track or catch up to better enable them to achieve their full potential. However, there is still a legacy of underachievement for some pupils in key stage 2, particularly pupils who have special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities and lower-attaining pupils.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

The school uses the services of external agencies well. A local teaching school provides an annual health check. It provides an independent review of the school, focusing on pupils’ progress and attainment alongside lesson visits and interviews with leaders. The reports generated are detailed and used to guide the school’s next steps well. External support delivered through joint training has also been used to supplement internal training on developing the effectiveness of teaching assistants during intervention work. This has been pivotal in developing the skills of the newly appointed coordinator for pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

In 2017, the progress of pupils leaving key stage 2 in reading, writing and mathematics was slower when compared to pupils leaving key stage 2 in 2016. Whilst still broadly in line with national averages in reading and mathematics, progress in writing for pupils leaving key stage 2 was below that seen nationally. However, in 2017, the proportion of pupils leaving key stage 2 who achieved the high standard in reading, writing and mathematics was above the national average.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

In 2017, pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities made very slow progress in reading, writing and mathematics from their various key stage 1 starting points. In 2017, the proportions of pupils leaving key stage 1 who achieved the expected standards in reading, writing and mathematics were broadly in line with those seen nationally. The proportions of pupils achieving at a greater depth were slightly better than those seen nationally. The proportion of children who achieved a good level of development in the early years in 2017 was above that seen nationally, including for reading, writing mathematics.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

At the last inspection, you were asked to share the good teaching practice in your school. Staff turnover has undoubtedly limited the impact of some of your work in this area. Nonetheless, less effective teachers are benefiting from the experience and expertise of more effective teachers through coaching and mentoring. In addition, teaching assistants have attended extensive training and are having a positive impact on the progress of pupils that they work with, particularly during afternoon intervention work. However, this progress is not monitored closely enough.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

You were also asked to improve the performance of girls in mathematics. In 2017, girls leaving key stage 2 made progress in line with the national average. Their attainment was higher than girls’ attainment nationally, at both the expected and high standard.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

Finally, you were asked to improve the progress of the least-able pupils. Inspection findings show that this is still a continuing area for development.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

You lead safeguarding effectively. All members of staff have read and understand the latest government documentation concerning safeguarding requirements. The checks that you have made on the suitability of staff to work with children are up- to-date. Records show that staff are trained annually on Keeping Children Safe in Education and The Safeguarding Code of Conduct. Furthermore, staff have recently attended training on the Prevent duty and indicators and actions to take relating to child sexual exploitation. There is a strong safeguarding culture at the school.

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Short inspection of Bottesford Church of England Primary School

The files you shared with me show that record keeping is well organised. This enables you to effectively retrieve information regarding vulnerable individuals to help you make important decisions regarding their welfare. Records show that leaders take timely actions where there are any concerns about pupils’ welfare.

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Inspection findings

 Since the last inspection, the school has inducted many new members of teaching staff. New leaders with key areas of responsibility are helping to improve the work of the school. These include a new deputy headteacher, a key stage 1 leader, an early years foundation stage leader, a coordinator for pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities as well as a new chair of the governing body.  The school’s newly implemented systems to check the progress made by pupils are effective in identifying pupils who are falling behind. Additional learning opportunities for these pupils are well focused and well coordinated by an experienced teacher. She liaises regularly with the class teachers to ensure that additional planned learning meets the pupils’ needs and ensures that the intervention work is effective. This well-coordinated, structured and focused intervention helps pupils to make rapid gains in their learning. However, a legacy

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Inspection findings

of underachievement means that some pupils still need to catch up.  Improvements in teaching and learning are beginning to have a positive impact on pupils’ progress and attainment in writing. However, school leaders acknowledge that there is still work to be done in this area. Teaching in some classes in key stage 2 is only recently enabling pupils to make strong progress. Consequently, improvements in progress are not yet consistent.  Some lower-attaining pupils in key stage 1 and key stage 2 are making rapid progress in reading and are demonstrating skills that suggest that they are now on track to achieve the expected standards for their age. Evidence seen in pupils’ books demonstrates that where teaching is stronger, lower-attaining pupils have made rapid progress in writing. However, this is not a consistent picture across the school. Some teachers do not effectively teach lower- attaining pupils key skills to enable them to make consistently strong progress,

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Inspection findings

especially in writing.  The new coordinator for pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities has attended training at the local teaching school and is improving the provision in the school. She has established the expectation of ensuring that there are clear criteria for the correct identification of specific needs and that the register for special educational needs is completed correctly. However, leaders have not ensured that teaching is planned carefully enough to ensure that pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities make the progress that they should, including during whole- class work.  The coordinator for pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities liaises well with the interventions manager to ensure that pupils receive support that meets their needs. However, leaders do not check the progress of pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities carefully enough to ensure that additional support and interventions are having the maximum impact.

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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

 the leadership and management of the provision for pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities is strengthened and outcomes for pupils are improved by: – ensuring that pupils’ needs are identified accurately – ensuring that teaching in class is better planned to meet the specific needs of pupils – carefully tracking the progress of pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities to ensure that teaching and additional support have the maximum impact on pupils’ progress  the quality of teaching, learning and assessment, especially in lower key stage 2, is improved by ensuring that: – improvements evident in teaching and learning become embedded so that all teaching is consistently good – key skills are taught more effectively so that lower-attaining pupils make the progress of which they are capable, especially in writing.

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Next steps for the school

I am copying this letter to the chair of the board of trustees and the director of education for the Diocese of Leicester, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children’s services for Leicestershire. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website.

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Information about the inspection

I met with you and your senior leadership team to review school leaders’ evaluation of the school’s effectiveness and to agree the key lines of enquiry. I met with members of the governing body to discuss how they held the school to account and discussed the work of the school. I observed lessons and looked at a sample of pupils’ books from a wide variety of subjects. I considered the views of the 42 responses of parents and carers who responded to Ofsted’s online survey, Parent View, and took account of the 14 responses to the staff survey. I also considered your own parent satisfaction surveys. I scrutinised various documents with you, including those relating to safeguarding, your self-evaluation report and school information about pupils’ progress. I listened to a sample of pupils read and I conducted a learning walk with a group of pupils, discussing their views and opinions on the work of the school.

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