Turves Green Boys' School

Turves Green Boys’ School Turves Green, Northfield, Birmingham, West Midlands B31 4BS

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Effectiveness of leadership and management Inadequate

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Inadequate

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Personal development, behaviour and welfare Inadequate

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Overall effectiveness at previous inspection Good

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

 Leaders and governors have been too slow in addressing the decline in standards at this school.  Pupils, including the most able, disadvantaged pupils and those pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) underachieve across a wide range of subjects, including English, mathematics and science.  A significant amount of the teaching at the school is weak. Teachers do not challenge pupils consistently to develop the skills, knowledge and understanding that is required to be successful.  Many teachers have low expectations about what pupils can achieve and how they should behave.  Some areas of the curriculum have been developed and are now ‘fit for purpose’, for example, in key stage 4 English and mathematics. However, it is too soon to see that this has had any real impact on the progress that pupils are making.  Senior and middle leaders’ use of assessment information is underdeveloped. As yet, it is not

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

clear how this information is being used effectively to improve the outcomes for groups of pupils, in all subject areas.  Pupils’ behaviour is poor. Pupils and staff say that large proportions of lesson time are disrupted and, as a result, learning time is wasted.  Some pupils told inspectors that they do not feel safe at the school. Pupils, especially those in key stage 3 and those with SEND, do not feel safe because of the poor behaviour of others.  Attendance overall, including for disadvantaged pupils and some pupils with SEND, is too low.  Leaders, including governors, do not ensure that the pupil premium funding is spent so that it has a positive impact on improving the outcomes of disadvantaged pupils.

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

 Safeguarding procedures to ensure that staff are recruited appropriately and trained about the risks pupils face are secure.  Pupils benefit from a range of extra-curricular opportunities, including trips and visits that broaden and enrich their learning.

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Full report

In accordance with section 44(1) of the Education Act 2005, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector is of the opinion that this school requires special measures because it is failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education and the persons responsible for leading, managing or governing the school are not demonstrating the capacity to secure the necessary improvement in the school.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Improve the quality of teaching by ensuring that all teachers: – have high expectations of what pupils can achieve and how they should behave – provide opportunities for all pupils, but especially the most able, to be stretched in their understanding and challenged in their learning – use the available assessment information to plan lessons and activities that engage pupils and deepen their understanding – consistently apply the school’s behaviour policies – check pupils’ understanding effectively in lessons.  Urgently improve pupils’ behaviour by ensuring that there is clearer understanding of the school policies and effective support for all members of staff so that these systems can be consistently applied, so that learning time is not wasted and all pupils feel safe at the school.  Reduce the amount of time some pupils miss from their education due to being absent from the school.  Increase the capacity and improve the effectiveness of leadership, including

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

governance, to ensure improved outcomes for all pupils, particularly the most able, pupils with SEND and disadvantaged pupils, by ensuring that: – systems for monitoring teaching, assessment, behaviour and attendance are strengthened, their processes are followed by all leaders and the data gathered is reported accurately to governors – the additional funding that the school receives has a positive impact on the outcomes of those groups of pupils it is intended for – all leaders routinely and systematically analyse information about all pupils, so that leaders can spot trends and patterns more quickly – all middle leaders are effective in monitoring and developing their subject area, including making sure there is an appropriate, challenging curriculum in place. An external review of the school’s use of the pupil premium funding should be undertaken, in order to assess how this aspect of leadership and management may be

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

improved. An external review of governance should be undertaken, in order to assess how this aspect of leadership and management may be improved. It is recommended that the school may not appoint newly qualified teachers.

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Effectiveness of leadership and management Inadequate

 The headteacher and leadership team are passionate about their school. They have an accurate view of the school’s strengths and weaknesses. However, they have been too slow at addressing some of these weaknesses. For example, only recently in core subjects has the curriculum been adapted to ensure that pupils are studying to the correct level for the reformed GCSE specifications. As a result, current pupils in the school are still underachieving.  The headteacher and governors have been proactive and outward facing by establishing networks of support outside the local authority. For example, they have engaged an external consultant to assist with school improvement this year. The leadership team has acted on the recommendations made, but so far there has been little visible success as a result of these initiatives.  Senior leaders have very recently begun to implement several improvement strategies

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Effectiveness of leadership and management Inadequate

to improve pupils’ outcomes. For example, information about how pupils are progressing is now analysed and discussed in achievement meetings with the assistant headteacher. During these meetings, actions are agreed and put in place. This system is showing signs of making a difference. However, the impact of these actions on pupils’ outcomes is yet to be seen.  Leaders do not routinely and systematically analyse and evaluate the information they have about pupils, especially groups of pupils, such as disadvantaged pupils. Consequently, they are not able to spot trends or patterns quickly enough to intervene in a timely manner. For example, the number of pupils who were removed from lessons for poor behaviour in the school had grown to a large number before leaders understood why this was happening and could take remedial action to try to resolve the situation.  Leaders’ monitoring of the effectiveness of the additional funding they receive, such as

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Effectiveness of leadership and management Inadequate

the pupil premium, is ineffective. Disadvantaged pupils continued to perform poorly across a wide range of subjects in 2018. Current disadvantaged pupils continue to do less well than others. Action plans to address this are copies of previous years’ and lack analysis. Therefore, leaders are not able to identify whether the spending is having a positive impact on outcomes.  The leadership of special educational needs in the school is ineffective. The quality of the support available to SEND pupils and their families is poor, and there is insufficient provision to help them to be successful in the school. Leaders have recently identified these concerns through an external review and are in the process of completing a recovery plan to address them.  Senior leaders have not developed the middle-leadership team and, therefore, the impact middle leaders have had on their departments is variable. Senior leaders have

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Effectiveness of leadership and management Inadequate

delegated the monitoring of teaching and learning to middle leaders. In some cases, the middle leaders lack the skills to make accurate judgments and do not have the experience to develop the standard of teaching. In some subjects, the middle leaders have failed to develop a curriculum that progressively builds learning over time to a level that ensures that all learners can be successful. There is some evidence that this is now being addressed, for example in key stage 4 mathematics and English, but it is not widespread enough to make the substantial improvements in pupils’ outcomes that are required.  The leadership of attendance is weak. Attendance is a key school priority this year, yet absence has increased for all pupils and for disadvantaged pupils and pupils with SEND. Action has been taken by the school, but leaders have failed to evaluate the impact of this action and identify what aspects of their strategy have not worked.

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Effectiveness of leadership and management Inadequate

Leaders are restructuring their pastoral team for September to try to address these concerns.  Leaders have maintained a broad curriculum, especially at key stage 4, with pupils able to select from a range of academic and vocational subjects. At key stage 3, some of this breadth has been lost, due to the additional time that is allocated to getting pupils ready for work at the school by improving their literacy, study and personal skills. Some staff and governors have expressed concerns about this approach to the curriculum. However, leaders are adamant that it is appropriate for the specific needs of the school’s present cohort of pupils.  Many staff spoken to, and who completed the staff survey, valued the professional development they can access. They felt that some of this has contributed to more effective practice, for example the training that the assistant headteacher has delivered to support literacy and communication development in all areas of the curriculum.

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Effectiveness of leadership and management Inadequate

However, the impact of this approach on pupils’ learning is still inconsistent across the school.  Leaders’ use of alternative provision is effective. Placements are chosen carefully and reviewed regularly. Pupils study English and mathematics and follow a vocational route that allows them to progress to further study or employment when they leave the school.

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Governance of the school

 Governors are dedicated. They are passionate about their school and want the very best for their pupils. They are clear about the strengths and weaknesses of the school and they know that standards must improve. Governors have encouraged the headteacher to enter into partnerships that are broader than through the local authority, for example engaging an external consultant to support school improvement this year. However, although the advice offered has been followed by leaders, there has been very little impact on pupils’ experience of the school.  Governors have not fulfilled their duties effectively to ensure that the additional funding the school receives to support disadvantaged pupils has secured better outcomes for this group of pupils.  Governors have not held senior leaders well enough to account over the declining standards in the school. Minutes from governors’ meetings show that they do not

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Governance of the school

always have sufficient information to assess how successful the leaders’ actions have been and they are not yet challenging leaders effectively about the impact of their actions.

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Safeguarding

 The arrangements for safeguarding are not effective.  School leaders do not ensure that all pupils feel safe at the school. Pupils, especially those in key stage 3 and pupils with SEND, feel unsafe at the school, due to the poor behaviour and incidents of bullying. Pupils have expressed concerns that, even when staff address one issue, another problem starts shortly afterwards. About a quarter of parents and carers who responded to Ofsted’s Parent View questionnaire said that the behaviour of pupils at the school is a concern and that their child does not feel safe at the school. Bullying is cited as a major factor for why they do not feel safe.  The school safeguarding team works constructively with external agencies and is persistent when it is concerned about a pupil’s welfare. The records that it keeps regarding these pupils are thorough and document in detail how each pupil has been supported.

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Safeguarding

 Leaders carry out appropriate checks on staff during the recruitment process and keep accurate records. All staff have been trained appropriately regarding safeguarding, including on the ‘Prevent’ duty.

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Inadequate

 The quality of teaching over time is weak. It is not supporting pupils to learn at the rate at which they are capable of. As a result, all pupils, including the most able, disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND, do not make good progress.  Too many teachers have low expectations about what their pupils can achieve. When planning lessons, teachers do not take full account of pupils’ abilities and individual needs. This means that many pupils, especially the most able, find tasks too easy and not challenging and, as a result, learn very little in lessons.  Teachers do not routinely plan lessons that engage pupils. Many teachers appear to plan lessons that revolve around self-explanatory worksheets. This allows some pupils to carry on working, if the teacher’s attention becomes focused on pupils who are misbehaving. Consequently, pupils who need extra support and the most able pupils underperform in many subjects.

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Inadequate

 Over time, few teachers are checking on how well pupils have understood what is being taught and whether their learning is moving on. When reviewing pupils’ books, many pupils have incomplete work or incorrect work. These issues are not addressed until after the pupil has completed a half-termly assessment. This leads to pupils performing less well in their assessments, as they repeat past mistakes.  Leaders and teachers use a range of assessments to ascertain how well pupils are achieving. These happen every half term. At present, the information collected is not sufficiently well scrutinised by middle leaders or teachers to help plan the next section of work. Information shared during the inspection shows that this is changing, especially in English and mathematics at key stage 4, but it is too soon to see the impact on pupils’ learning.  Teachers do not select the most appropriate learning resources to engage pupils. This,

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Inadequate

together with being given work that is too easy for them, results in pupils becoming disengaged from their learning. For example, in several Year 7 mathematics lessons, inspectors observed pupils who were completing work they had previously done at primary school. When this happens, pupils engage in low-level disruption and/or poor behaviour, which hinders the learning of all pupils and wastes valuable learning time.  There is a lack of consistency across the school in how teachers apply agreed policies, particularly the new behaviour policy. In the staff survey, nearly half of the staff that responded expressed concerns that they felt unprepared and ill-equipped to use this new approach. As a result, pupils disregard school rules, and this has a negative impact on the progress that they make.  The monitoring of teaching at present is insufficient and lacks a systematic approach. In recent times, leaders have focused heavily on introducing a new behaviour policy.

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Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Inadequate

That has been at the expense of a focus on whether teaching is improving quickly enough.

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Personal development and welfare

 The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is inadequate.  Teachers’ low expectations of pupils mean that poor effort or lack of motivation is accepted in too many classrooms. Teachers have accepted incomplete work and pupils opting out of tasks, such as the completing of feedback activities, so that they are now commonplace. As a result, many pupils are satisfied with producing poor-quality work, rather than striving to be as good as they can be.  Leaders have not done enough to create a climate where bullying is unacceptable. Although an anti-bullying programme features in the school’s personal development curriculum, too many pupils feel that bullying is a feature of life at the school. Pupils told inspectors that bullying is one of the reasons they do not feel safe at the school, and nearly a quarter of parents do not think bullying is dealt with well by the school.

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Personal development and welfare

 The support that pupils with SEND receive from the school is weak. These pupils are not receiving the focused and timely care that is necessary for them to access the full range of learning that they should. Parents also expressed concern about the way that pupils with SEND are supported in the school. They said that staff do not understand their children’s needs and the children are not given the support that they require to be successful. As a result, this group of pupils underachieve academically and feel vulnerable in the social environment.  In contrast, the programme to promote pupils’ personal development is planned well and covers relevant and topical issues, such as keeping pupils safe from radicalisation. Pupils have a good level of understanding of issues that are prevalent in their local area. Pupils appreciate the work the school does to help them keep safe online and pupils are proud to be trained as e-safety ambassadors. Parents and pupils also

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Personal development and welfare

appreciate the range of extra-curricular activities and educational trips and visits that are offered to them. However, pupils reported that some of these activities are not well attended and leaders are aware that they need to monitor this more closely to ensure that they are having the impact on pupils that they are intended to have.

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Behaviour

 The behaviour of pupils is inadequate.  Too many pupils engage in behaviour that either makes other pupils feel unsafe or stops others from learning. Pupils say that a large proportion of their lessons are disrupted to the extent that their learning is affected. Pupils, parents and staff raised concerns about the behaviours of some pupils and expressed a perception that the situation is getting worse. Fixed-term exclusions are nearly double the number at this point in the previous year. As a result, pupils miss valuable learning time.  Teachers do not apply the school’s behaviour policy consistently. In the past, teachers could place pupils in an isolation area when they were misbehaving. Leaders recognised that this led to some pupils missing a lot of learning time in certain subjects. In response to this, leaders have introduced the ‘winning classroom’, and teachers must use the gateway with pupils before they can be removed from a

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Behaviour

classroom. In the staff survey, many staff expressed concerns about this new policy and many pupils explained how they felt that more lessons were disrupted than previously. As a result, low-level disruption is not rare and, when it occurs, it is not dealt with swiftly.  Attendance overall, and for disadvantaged pupils and some pupils with SEND, is low and declining, despite this being a school priority for leaders this year. A new system, including additional staffing and direct follow-up with families, is now in place. However, these interventions have failed to stop absence increasing and too many pupils are still persistently absent from the school. As a result, they miss large amounts of their education, in both academic and personal development.  Behaviour during breaktimes and lunchtimes is heavily supervised, but pupils reported that, despite this, behaviour is still poor. Pupils, parents and staff reported that there is

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Behaviour

a lot of physicality among the pupils, which they feel leaders tend to dismiss as ‘boys being boisterous’. Pupils explained how this behaviour makes them feel unsafe, especially on staircases and in the canteen.

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Outcomes for pupils Inadequate

 Pupils currently at the school, including those who are disadvantaged, the most able and pupils with SEND, are underachieving. This is because of weak teaching and low expectations. These are evident in the quality of pupils’ work in a wide range of subjects, including English, mathematics, science, humanities and languages.  Pupils’ progress in 2017 was well below the national averages in a range of subjects, including mathematics, English, science, languages and humanities. There was a further decline in 2018 for all pupils and most-able pupils, who are now in the bottom 10% of schools nationally. Although the progress for disadvantaged pupils improved, they still performed less well than their peers in the school and significantly worse than others nationally.  Disadvantaged pupils, both historically and those currently in the school, do not achieve well. The progress they make is significantly below that of other pupils with

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Outcomes for pupils Inadequate

similar starting points. This is due to low expectations, the ineffective use of pupil premium funding and these pupils being absent from school more often than others.  Senior and middle leaders collect information about how pupils are progressing every half term. Middle leaders are now working with teachers from other schools to moderate these assessments, to ensure that they are more accurate than they were in the last academic year. However, at present, leaders are only analysing effectively what this assessment information tells them about year 11 pupils’ underperformance  The provision for independent careers advice and guidance is successful at key stage 4, and pupils receive detailed information. Although given helpful advice on future career pathways, for many pupils, preparation for their next steps is marred by underachievement in academic subjects. Only one third of pupils in 2018 moved on to

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Outcomes for pupils Inadequate

college courses or apprenticeships, studying at the level they would normally be expected to.

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School details

This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005.

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School details

Type of school Secondary Comprehensive School category Maintained

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School details

Appropriate authority The governing body

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Information about this school

 The school is a smaller than the average-sized secondary school.  The proportion of disadvantaged pupils is well above average.  The proportion of pupils with SEN support is well above the national average.  There are currently several pupils who attend alternative provision placements at three different providers. Two of these are local authority provision and the third is an independent school, Southside Learning Centre.

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Information about this inspection

 Inspectors reviewed a wide range of documentation. This included the school’s self- evaluation and action plans, school policies, and information about pupils’ attainment and progress, behaviour, attendance, exclusions and the quality of teaching, learning and assessment.  Inspectors observed teaching and learning in lessons and parts of lessons across a wide range of subjects and key stages. They observed pupils’ behaviour between lessons and at breaktime and lunchtime.  Inspectors evaluated the work in pupils’ books and folders in lessons across a range of year groups and subjects.  Inspectors held meetings with senior and middle leaders, and with teachers, including those who are newly qualified. Inspectors also spoke to the local authority adviser and the external consultant that the school is working with.  The views of parents and carers were considered through Parent View, Ofsted’s online

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Information about this inspection

questionnaire. 118 parents responded with over 75 free-text comments.  Inspectors held four formal and numerous informal discussions with pupils throughout the inspection.  The lead inspector met with the chair of the local governing body and two of his colleagues.

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Inspection team

Lois Kelly, lead inspector Ofsted Inspector

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Inspection team

Julie Griffiths Ofsted Inspector guidance ‘Raising concerns and making a complaint about Ofsted’, which is available from Ofsted’s website: www.gov.uk/government/publications/complaints-about-ofsted . If you would like Ofsted to send you a copy of the guidance, please telephone 0300 123 4234, or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk .

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Inspection team

In the report, ‘disadvantaged pupils’ refers to those pupils who attract government pupil premium funding: pupils claiming free school meals at any point in the last six years and pupils in care or who left care through adoption or another formal route. www.gov.uk/pupil-premium-information-for-schools-and- alternative-provision-settings .

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Inspection team

Parent View You can use Parent View to give Ofsted your opinion on your child’s school. Ofsted will use the information parents and carers provide when deciding which schools to inspect and when and as part of the inspection.

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Inspection team

You can also use Parent View to find out what other parents and carers think about schools in England. You can visit www.parentview.ofsted.gov.uk , or look for the link on the main Ofsted website: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofsted .

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Inspection team

achieve excellence in the care of children and young people, and in education and skills for learners of all ages. It regulates and inspects childcare and children’s social care, and inspects the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), schools, colleges, initial teacher training, further education and skills, adult and community learning, and education and training in prisons and other secure establishments. It assesses council children’s services, and inspects services for children looked after, safeguarding and child protection.

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Inspection team

If you would like a copy of this document in a different format, such as large print or Braille, please telephone 0300 123 1231, or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk .

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Inspection team

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Inspection team

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Inspection team

T: 0300 123 4234 Textphone: 0161 618 8524 E: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk W: www.gov.uk/ofsted

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