Marjory Kinnon School

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

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Ms Tracy Meredith Marjory Kinnon School Hatton Road Bedfont Feltham TW14 9QZ

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Short inspection of Marjory Kinnon School

Following my visit to the school on 30 April 2019 with Kanwaljit Singh, Ofsted 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 the school was judged to be good in April 2015.

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Short inspection of Marjory Kinnon School

The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Based on the evidence gathered during this short inspection, I am of the opinion that the school has demonstrated strong practice and marked improvement in specific areas. This may indicate that the school has improved significantly overall. Therefore, I am recommending that the school’s next inspection be a section 5 inspection.

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Short inspection of Marjory Kinnon School

The school has undergone significant change in the last year, with a move to a new school building and an increase in the number of pupils on roll from 170 in 2017/18 to 243 in April 2019. During this period of change, leaders have sustained a calm and stable learning environment for pupils, making good use of improved facilities to broaden the curriculum and therapeutic offer. Pupils benefit from excellent classroom and play spaces. Designated spaces for interventions and specialist support are highly attractive and used well.

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Short inspection of Marjory Kinnon School

Staff morale is high, as reflected in your recent survey. Staff value your investment in their continuing professional development. Your recruitment strategy of employing graduates and supporting them through teacher training has proved very successful. You have created a highly qualified therapeutic team to lead on the provision for pupils’ mental health and well-being. You also provide leadership opportunities for staff at all levels and support them with effective coaching and mentoring. As a result, staff retention levels are high. You are focused on the changing needs of the school as it grows and have clear plans to increase the leadership capacity of the school from September 2019. Middle leaders make an outstanding contribution to school improvement. They implement new initiatives skilfully, monitor the impact on teaching and learning rigorously and provide excellent support and challenge to all staff.

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Short inspection of Marjory Kinnon School

The governing body fully supports your vision and shares your ambition for the school. Governors are highly skilled and offer appropriate support and challenge to leaders. Through a wide range of committees and visits to the school, they are well- informed about all aspects of school life. Governors ensure that additional funding is spent effectively to improve outcomes for the most vulnerable pupils.

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Short inspection of Marjory Kinnon School

Parents and carers value the quality of education and the support they receive from all staff. The majority of parents who completed the Parent View survey told us that their children are happy and have made excellent progress since joining the school. Parents also commented positively on the training and support provided by the therapeutic team.

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Short inspection of Marjory Kinnon School

Pupils are clearly proud of their school and enjoy the opportunities you give them to share their views. You listened to pupils’ concerns about the quality of school dinners, and this has led to a change of caterers and improvement in the range of food served at lunchtimes. Pupils are also given a wide range of responsibilities and opportunities to develop their views through sports leadership, school council, eco- council and the ambassadors programme. Throughout the inspection, inspectors observed the consistently high quality of relationships between pupils and adults. As a result, pupils trust adults to care for them well and respect their views.

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Short inspection of Marjory Kinnon School

Your leadership team and governors have ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose. There is a strong culture of vigilance. The school’s single central record is maintained accurately and all procedures for ensuring safety on site are followed carefully. Comprehensive risk assessments are completed for off-site visits. Regular fire drills ensure that all staff and pupils are familiar with fire safety procedures. The governing body’s premises committee ensures that site safety is maintained to a high standard. A high number of leaders and governors have completed safer recruitment training.

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Short inspection of Marjory Kinnon School

All staff and governors have completed safeguarding training. Your designated safeguarding leads ensure that safeguarding concerns are addressed by relevant training for staff, including on the ‘Prevent’ duty. Your staff know how to recognise and report concerns. Referrals are tracked carefully and records are maintained meticulously, ensuring that pupils and families receive the support they need in a timely manner from other services.

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Short inspection of Marjory Kinnon School

Parents and pupils report that they feel safe at school and have trusted adults with whom they can share their concerns. Workshops for pupils and parents, including themes such as anti-bullying, support families in keeping their children safe at home. Pupils’ behaviour, in lessons and around the school, was exemplary throughout the inspection. Incidents of bullying and derogatory language are rare and dealt with swiftly by adults.

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Inspection findings

 We agreed to focus on four lines of enquiry, including safeguarding. The lines of enquiry were based on the areas for improvement identified in the previous inspection report, the school’s self-evaluation, and recommendations from external reviews.  We first considered how school initiatives to promote reading are leading to improvements in literacy for all pupils across all subjects. There is a clear focus on developing pupils’ speaking, reading and writing skills. Trained literacy leaders have implemented reading initiatives, which are delivered daily by all staff in reading sessions. Literacy leaders provide effective modelling and support for lesson planning. They carefully monitor the quality of teaching, learning and assessment through regular learning walks and scrutiny of pupils’ books. Detailed criteria are used to measure the progress in pupils’ reading skills. As a result, teaching standards have risen across the school.

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Inspection findings

 Other reading initiatives, which have been piloted in targeted classes, demonstrate a positive impact on pupils’ literacy skills and are now being rolled out across the whole school. Adults are encouraged to share their love of reading through wall displays of their favourite books. Training for parents enables them to support their children’s reading at home. The library for key stage 3 and key stage 4 pupils offers an attractive reading space and a wide range of books that encourages pupils to read independently.  Pupils respond enthusiastically to literacy tasks and demonstrate a love of reading. There is a strong focus on teaching phonics from the early years, which has a positive impact on pupils’ spelling skills. Older pupils are able to read fluently and demonstrate a range of reading skills, including recall, inference and making predictions. Pupils are keen to extend their vocabulary. In Year 10

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Inspection findings

classes, for example, pupils use a thesaurus confidently to find interesting synonyms which they then apply to their own writing. In Year 9 classes, pupils discussed the features of Gothic texts and rewrote poems and familiar stories, using their own imagery. Teachers and support staff use questioning and writing resources skilfully to ensure that pupils of all abilities progress well.  Literacy skills are promoted effectively across all areas of the curriculum. During the inspection, inspectors saw excellent examples in physical education, science, mathematics, music, humanities, art, and food lessons and books of pupils developing their speaking, reading and writing skills. In the early years classes, for example, children are encouraged to read recipes independently and follow instructions for making biscuits. In key stage 2 science lessons, pupils are taught key vocabulary and use role play to understand the digestive system. This

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Inspection findings

knowledge is used to help them make predictions and record their ideas in a scientific way. As a result of reading initiatives, most pupils are now making good or better progress from their starting points and an increasing number of pupils in key stage 4 are being entered for GCSE exams.  The second area of focus was to evaluate the impact of therapeutic provision on improved academic outcomes for pupils. This is because leaders identify pupils’ personal development, mental health and life skills as fundamental to their success in living independent lives as adults.  Therapeutic support is at the core of planning for the needs of every pupil. The therapeutic team assesses individual pupils on joining the school, and when pupils are not making expected academic progress, the team draws up a programme of appropriate intervention. Targets are reviewed regularly through pupils’ individual ‘provision maps’ to evaluate the impact of interventions. The

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Inspection findings

therapeutic team also carries out whole-class assessments and creates action plans for teachers to develop pupils’ ability to learn, to manage stressful situations and to help them engage with learning at an age-appropriate level. School progress data for reading and writing shows that, following specific therapeutic interventions, pupils previously failing to achieve are now making expected or better progress in their literacy skills.  The school works effectively with a wide range of external specialists, who offer a range of bespoke therapeutic interventions. Examples include play therapists, speech and language therapists and occupational therapists. Specialists support individual pupils and offer training to staff so that they can deliver programmes within the classroom that support pupils’ communication skills. Precise target- setting and monitoring allow teachers to assess the impact of interventions on

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Inspection findings

pupils’ academic progress. You acknowledge that, as the school grows, the school’s expertise in therapeutic work should be shared more widely with other schools.  The impact of training for staff and interventions for pupils is evident in the culture of the school. Pupils’ attendance is above the national average for similar schools. Pupils love coming to school. There have been very few incidents that have required the use of positive handling in the past three years. This is because staff are sensitive to the needs of every pupil and intervene quickly to help pupils manage their behaviour. Pupils are helped to communicate their needs and adults respond positively and attentively. Lessons are planned to meet the needs of all pupils. As a result, pupils’ behaviour for learning and desire to learn are excellent.  The third area of focus looked at how well pupils are challenged so that their achievement is the best it can be. While the vast majority of pupils at Marjory

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Inspection findings

Kinnon School make good or better progress from their starting points, all pupils are working below age-related expectations. The senior leadership team is determined to close the achievement gap by raising expectations of what each pupil can achieve.  Leaders have set high expectations of what pupils can achieve. These expectations are shared by all staff and pupils themselves. The school’s rigorous assessment systems help staff to identify precise and personalised targets for each pupil. As a result, all pupils receive the right level of challenge and know what to do to improve their work. During the inspection, inspectors saw evidence of challenge across a wide range of subjects and in pupils’ work. In mathematics, for example, all pupils have a challenge question to complete as part of their daily tasks.  Leaders of mathematics identified that in previous years pupils made less progress in their number skills than in reading and writing. The teaching of

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Inspection findings

mathematics was inconsistent and did not build upon pupils’ prior knowledge. Since the introduction of new teaching approaches in 2018, a significant number of pupils are now exceeding expected targets in number and calculation. Teachers explain new vocabulary and concepts well and expect pupils to talk through their thinking so that they can correct their own mistakes. All pupils have a challenge question to complete as part of their daily tasks, which is set at an appropriate level. Consistency of planning is monitored by leaders through regular learning walks, team teaching and progress meetings. Some of the new teaching approaches are at a pilot stage and therefore not all classes currently benefit from the impact and challenge which these provide.

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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

 school initiatives in reading and mathematics are rolled out to all classes so that all pupils can achieve well  as leadership capacity grows, the school’s expertise in therapeutic support for pupils is shared widely with other schools.

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

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Information about the inspection

During the inspection, the inspection team met with you, members of your senior leadership team, subject leaders, members of the governing body and the school’s improvement partner. Inspectors also met with newly qualified and trainee teachers. In lessons and at lunchtime, inspectors spoke to pupils about their work and experiences of school. Inspectors also heard pupils read from a range of abilities and year groups. Learning walks were carried out jointly with senior leaders across all key stages. Inspectors looked at the work in pupils’ books in lessons to look at progress in literacy across all subjects. Inspectors looked at the school’s self- evaluation and development plan, behaviour records and documents tracking the impact of therapeutic interventions on pupils’ academic progress. The school’s single central record, safeguarding procedures and child protection documentation were checked. The school’s website was also reviewed. The 18 responses to Ofsted’s

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Information about the inspection

online parent questionnaire, Parent View, were considered.

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