Woodside Primary School

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

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Miss Claire Bennett Headteacher Woodside Primary School Gittin Street Oswestry Shropshire SY11 1DT

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Short inspection of Woodside Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 20 March 2019 with Gill Turner, Her Majesty’s Inspector, 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 your predecessor school was judged to be good in February 2015.

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Short inspection of Woodside Primary School

The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Since your appointment as headteacher in 2018, you have focused on developing a happy, learning community. Pupils and their families are nurtured and encouraged to thrive. They develop as confident, resilient and successful learners who are keen to contribute to the school and wider community.

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Short inspection of Woodside Primary School

You and your associate headteachers have developed a strong ethos and lead a happy and inclusive school where pupils get on well together. You set high expectations for learning and for pupils’ behaviour, and know the school well. In the previous inspection leaders were tasked with ensuring that the school development plan had more measureable outcomes. You have set out, in your evaluation of the school, the reasons why you judge the school to be good. You have written an effective development plan to improve aspects of the school that are not as strong.

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Short inspection of Woodside Primary School

The curriculum offers breadth and balance. In music, highly skilful members of staff have developed the school choir into a group that the headteacher spoke of with pride. Additional peripatetic musicians enhance provision by offering personalised tuition and after-school clubs. Every pupil has the opportunity to take part in forest school throughout the year. There is a carefully planned progression from early years to Year 6. Year 6 pupils are expected to be able to apply their skills. For example, they can all build a fire safely and cook fajitas.

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Short inspection of Woodside Primary School

Governors are well organised. They ensure that their work is sharply focused. For example, the governing body has supported you well during recent staffing decisions that have been made.

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Short inspection of Woodside Primary School

Pupils enjoy excellent relationships with staff. The care of your pupils is at the heart of the culture you have created. From the moment they start the school day, to the moment they leave for home, pupils are encouraged to try their best.

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Short inspection of Woodside Primary School

The majority of parents speak highly of the school. Most of the parents who completed Parent View, Ofsted’s online questionnaire, and those inspectors spoke with, are of the view that their children are happy, safe and making good progress. Parents also say that their children are taught well. Most would recommend the school. A very small minority felt that communication could be better when dealing with their concerns.

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Short inspection of Woodside Primary School

You have ensured that the areas for improvement raised in the previous inspection report have been addressed successfully. Pupils said that the work given to them was mostly challenging. Leaders have refined their approach to checking the progress pupils make as they move from class to class. The system now makes it very clear which pupils are falling behind. As a result, leaders now spot more quickly those pupils who may be underachieving.

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Short inspection of Woodside Primary School

Leaders place a high priority on keeping pupils safe and have made sure that safeguarding arrangements are thorough, fit for purpose and of high quality. All appropriate checks are undertaken on the suitability of staff to work with pupils. You provide visitors to the school with useful safeguarding information, including how to report any concerns. Leaders arrange regular safeguarding training and staff, during the inspection, stated that safeguarding is a high priority within the school. Information is displayed around school. As a result, staff have up-to-date knowledge.

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Short inspection of Woodside Primary School

Pupils feel safe and very well cared for in school. They explained to me how the school helps them to keep safe. They commented on how the closed-circuit television around the school helped teachers identify issues that occur around the site. They understand about the hazards of using the internet and social media. Visiting speakers from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children inform pupils about abuse of children and the Childline helpline. Pupils told me that there is little or no bullying in school and that they have enjoyed personal, social, health and economic sessions on how to be a good friend. The school’s work with outside agencies is good.

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Short inspection of Woodside Primary School

Pupils are very proud of their school and enjoy their learning. In class, pupils are enthusiastic and well behaved. They listen attentively to adults and work well with each other. Little learning time is lost and pupils are very keen to do their best. The school curriculum is carefully planned to develop pupils as caring and thoughtful citizens. Staff teach pupils to respect and value differences, including between different cultures and religions. Leaders have plans to redevelop the children’s centre into a well-being centre. They intend to bring in a skilled, experienced professional to oversee their strong work in supporting their community. This is in response to the increasing range and complexity of support the school is offering its families. It reflects the strong culture of keeping pupils safe and putting them at the heart of the inclusive school community.

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Inspection findings

 The pattern of progress in your school has been very variable across subjects and from one year to the next. I wanted to find out the reasons for this. You indicated that assessment procedures in some year groups had needed refining. To address this, you arranged sessions where staff worked together on assessment, so that they could identify and iron out any differences in their judgements. As a result, assessment is accurate and in future you will be able to identify precisely how well pupils progress during their time in the school.  In 2018 at the end of key stage 2, pupils’ progress declined to below the national average in mathematics. Pupils’ mathematical fluency is improving, because teachers plan opportunities for pupils to practise their skills. Through your chosen approach, pupils use visual images and resources to represent their thinking in different ways. Pupils select challenges and teachers check their choices so that

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Inspection findings

tasks are matched to pupils’ abilities. However, evidence from pupils’ books shows that problem-solving tasks are less frequent and limit pupils’ opportunities to develop their reasoning skills, in particular for disadvantaged pupils and boys. You have identified that there is still more to do to develop teachers’ understanding of the use of strategies to deepen pupils’ mathematical thinking.  In response to inconsistencies over time in the quality of writing, teachers are now providing pupils with a range of opportunities to write for different purposes. As a result, the work in pupils’ books showed that an increasing proportion are working at an appropriate standard for their age. Pupils are developing their confidence and skills in building sentences and using vocabulary to good effect. However, there is little evidence in pupils’ books, in particular those of boys, of pupils being given opportunities to develop their writing further and at greater

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Inspection findings

depth. As a result, these pupils are not making the strong progress in writing of which they are capable.  Inspectors looked at the impact of funding to secure the achievement of disadvantaged pupils. The proportion of disadvantaged pupils in the school is lower than the national average. You use regular discussions of pupils’ progress to review and revise the extra support funded through the additional pupil premium funding. Staff, including specialists, provide support to enable disadvantaged pupils to develop their resilience and to improve their skills further in reading, writing and mathematics. As a result, the progress of disadvantaged pupils is improving. However, disadvantaged pupils do not perform as well as their peers nationally.  You and your staff have responded quickly to fluctuations in the performance of pupils in reading. You have developed many strategies to promote the progress of reading for pupils of all ages. You have rightly recognised that pupils need

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Inspection findings

more practice in developing their comprehension skills to develop greater understanding and improve fluency. Your school library has a rich and varied supply of fiction and non-fiction books. You utilise technology by supplying class sets of iPads, fully equipped with reading programmes, across the school. This has resulted in a far stronger performance across school by current pupils.

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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 consistency and quality of problem-solving and reasoning opportunities are improved across the curriculum, especially for disadvantaged pupils and boys  teachers plan opportunities to develop writing of all pupils, especially boys, through the skilled refinement and redrafting of previous work.

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Next steps for the school

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

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Information about the inspection

During this inspection, inspectors made observations of teaching and learning across the school during observations of learning with the headteacher. We held meetings with school leaders and members of the governing body. We had discussions with parents at the start of the school day and scrutinised the 75 responses to Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View. We considered a range of information supplied by the school, including checks on the quality of teaching, the school’s development plan, school policies and records relating to attendance and safeguarding procedures. We listened to some pupils reading in lessons, scrutinised pupils’ books in different subjects and looked at school assessment information from the current school year.

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