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Store Street Manchester M1 2WD T 0300 123 1231 www.gov.uk/ofsted

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Mrs Michele Robinson Headteacher All Saints’ CofE Primary School Easby Drive Ilkley West Yorkshire LS29 9BE

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Subject inspection of All Saints’ CofE Primary School

Following my visit to your school on 21 January 2020, I write on behalf of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills to confirm the inspection findings. The findings do not change the overall effectiveness judgement of outstanding from the last section 5 inspection.

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Subject inspection of All Saints’ CofE Primary School

This inspection was conducted under section 8 of the Education Act 2005 and in accordance with Ofsted’s published procedures for a no formal designation inspection of schools. The inspection was carried out to enable Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector to better understand the quality of education in specific subjects provided by outstanding primary schools.

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Main findings

You reorganised the responsibilities of subject leaders at the beginning of this academic year. Consequently, the subject leader for geography has not been in post long. Curriculum plans and assessment processes are currently under review. As a result, you are considering what to teach and when. Geography topics, such as ‘Raging Rivers’ and ‘Island Home’, include some opportunities for pupils to recap their learning during each unit of work. However, because topics are taught in isolation, there are limited opportunities for pupils to identify themes between topics or apply newly acquired skills to a range of different concepts.

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Main findings

You are aiming to ensure that the curriculum is appropriately sequenced and that assessment informs teachers’ planning and broader curriculum design. There is some work to do to reach this point.

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Main findings

Geography is prominent in the curriculum. Teachers enjoy teaching geography and pupils enjoy learning about it. At key stage 1, the curriculum covers the national curriculum in full. However, our joint inspection activities uncovered some shortcomings in the key stage 2 geography curriculum. Presently, pupils do not learn about, or cover in sufficient detail, topics such as biomes, vegetation belts or distribution of natural resources, and pupils’ understanding of four- and six-figure grid references is variable.

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Main findings

Children in the early years have a strong understanding of the world. Staff plan relevant activities that stimulate children’s curiosity about the seasons, local habitats and countries of the world. For example, during my visit to the early years, Reception children were tasting Chinese food and painting Chinese symbols to represent numbers. Staff asked the children many searching questions about China so that, towards the conclusion of the activity, some pupils were able to describe China as being ‘far away’ and ‘too far to walk to’.

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Main findings

Pupils, including disadvantaged pupils and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, have a wide range of opportunities to learn about and visit their local area. Pupils see and experience geography in action by conducting river experiments in the River Wharfe and the nearby Heber’s Ghyll or dressing up as an Anglo-Saxon while investigating early land use near York. The pupils I spoke with were able to recall the main learning points from these visits with confidence and a beaming smile as they lived the moment over in their minds.

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Main findings

Teachers model ambitious geographical vocabulary. However, some pupils are not always clear about the meaning of some words and phrases. When this occurs, the main learning point is not well understood by pupils. This is because pupils have not built a depth of geographical vocabulary over time.

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Main findings

You rightly place an emphasis on developing staff to be the best they can be. In this way, you are supporting the new subject leader of geography by ‘buddying’ her up with an experienced colleague. Furthermore, the subject leader has identified and signed up to number of external training courses with the aim of improving her curriculum understanding further, as well as developing strategies to teach pupils about climate change.

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Evidence

I met with you, the deputy headteacher with responsibility for curriculum and the subject leader for geography. I visited lessons in the early years foundation stage and in key stages 1 and 2. I spoke to pupils from these lessons about their work in geography. I looked at a selection of pupils’ work from the lessons that I visited with the deputy headteacher and subject leader for geography. I evaluated the geography curriculum plans and met with teachers to discuss the lesson visits and their approach to the teaching of geography.

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Context

All Saints’ CofE Primary School is larger than the average-sized primary school. Currently, the school is undergoing building work to increase the size of the building and intake of pupils. There are currently 327 pupils on roll. The proportion of pupils who are entitled to free school meals is well below average. The deputy headteacher took up post in September 2019.

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Context

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

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