St Edmund's Catholic Primary School

Inspection Report St Edmund's Catholic Primary School

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102912 Unique Reference Number Richmond Upon Thames Local Authority 286525 Inspection number 28 °29 November 2006 Inspection dates Nicola Davies Reporting inspector

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

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Nelson Road School address Primary Type of school Whitton Voluntary aided School category Twickenham TW2 7BB 4 °11 Age range of pupils 020 8894 7898 Telephone number Mixed Gender of pupils 020 8893 3032 Fax number 409 Number on roll (school) Mrs D Dorling Chair The governing body Appropriate authority Mrs C Moreland Headteacher 12 February 2003 Date of previous school inspection

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Inspection number Inspection dates Age group 286525 28 °29 November 2006 4°11 Website: www.ofsted.gov.uk

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This document may be reproduced in whole or in part for non-commercial educational purposes, provided that the information quoted is reproduced without adaptation and the source and date of publication are stated.

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Further copies of this report are obtainable from the school. Under the Education Act 2005, the school must provide a copy of this report free of charge to certain categories of people. A charge not exceeding the full cost of reproduction may be made for any other copies supplied.

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Introduction

The inspection was carried out by three Additional Inspectors.

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Description of the school

Most pupils at this larger-than-average Catholic primary school are of White British heritage. Just under a third of pupils are from minority ethnic backgrounds which is an increase since the time of the last inspection. The percentage of bilingual pupils has also risen, although relatively few are at early stages of learning English as an additional language. Fewer pupils are eligible for free school meals than is usual.

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Key for inspection grades

Outstanding Grade 1 Good Grade 2 Satisfactory Grade 3 Inadequate Grade 4 1 Inspection Report: St Edmund's Catholic Primary School, 28 °29 November 2006

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Grade: 2

This popular and friendly school provides a good education for its pupils and is very highly valued by parents. As one of the school's newer parents wrote 'All teachers are approachable anytime which gives me a feeling as if we belong to a single family'. Lots of lively teaching and a good, varied curriculum with popular extra activities means that pupils work hard, achieve well, enjoy school and attend regularly. One parent's positive comments encapsulated the views of many that 'This is a truly happy and well balanced school maintaining good family links, teaching and progress'. Children enter the Reception classes with skills which are at least average overall, although in each year group, there are children whose skills are at earlier stages. Enthusiastic teaching and a well considered range of activities mean they make good progress, particularly in acquiring early reading skills. Throughout the school, pupils

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Grade: 2

make good progress as a result of good, imaginative teaching and careful individual support. This means that most pupils reach standards which are above, and often well above average, by the time they leave the school. Effective care, guidance and support contribute to these good academic outcomes and to pupils' well developed personal and social skills. The school is well led by the popular headteacher. Leaders and managers make good use of information from a range of sources, including parents, to accurately identify the school's strengths and weaknesses and to take effective action. Successful recent examples include the more effective tracking of younger pupils' progress and making sure that pupils have good opportunities to experiment in science lessons. Similarly, teachers are beginning to use pupils' views well to add to their own understanding of how well individuals and groups achieve in lessons. However they are not yet

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Grade: 2

consistently using these insights to influence the next steps in their planning. The school has accurately noted that the monitoring of teaching is not yet as effective as it could be, which helps explain why there are inconsistencies in teaching. However, the school's successful track record of identifying and improving aspects of the education it provides, combined with its strong ethos of confident and caring team-work, confirm its good capacity to go from strength to strength.

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What the school should do to improve further

• Ensure all teaching and learning is consistently good or better by more effective monitoring of teaching so that teachers are given regular advice about how to improve further • Ensure teachers regularly evaluate pupils' progress in lessons and use this information to adjust their teaching plans 2 Inspection Report: St Edmund's Catholic Primary School, 28 °29 November 2006

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Grade: 2

Achievement is good throughout the school and standards are above average. There are no significant differences in the progress made by different groups of pupils, including bilingual pupils and those with learning difficulties. Results of national tests at the end of Year 6 are above average and exceptionally high in English. For example, in the most recent tests, well over half of the pupils achieved higher levels in this subject. Whilst results in mathematics and science are consistently above average, fewer pupils achieve at the higher levels. However, improved procedures for tracking the progress of pupils in these subjects, from Year 1 onwards, are helping to ensure that all pupils, including those who are more able, make good or better progress towards challenging targets.

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Grade: 2

Pupils' personal development and well-being, including their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, are good. Inspection evidence supports the views of parents that their children enjoy coming to school and establish trusting relationships with their teachers and other adults within the school. Pupils speak openly of their pride in the school and the many good things on offer - lessons, clubs, friends, playtimes, and outings. Behaviour is good and pupils have positive attitudes to learning. Through class discussions and assemblies, pupils can distinguish right from wrong. They understand moral issues of fairness and show consideration for those less fortunate than themselves. The active school council provides a strong forum in which pupils express their views and influence future developments within the school. Pupils contribute well to the local community although the school is hoping to extend this, for example,

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Grade: 2

by making contact with a school in South Africa. Pupils develop a good understanding of what it means to have a healthy lifestyle. They feel safe at school and 'pupil safety officers' take responsibility for spotting and reporting any hazards around the school. Pupils work in harmony with each other and develop useful life skills, for example, by helping out in the school office at lunchtimes or deciding how to spend their school council budget. Such activities, together with their good basic skills, means they are well prepared for their secondary education.

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Grade: 2

Teaching is good overall with pockets of outstanding practice. Teachers manage pupils', behaviour well. In addition, they generally produce lively lessons that catch pupils' 3 Inspection Report: St Edmund's Catholic Primary School, 28 °29 November 2006 interest and keep them engaged, for example through the good use of practical activities. Learning is further enhanced because teachers have good subject knowledge. They use questioning effectively and give pupils good opportunities to discuss their work. This helps to ensure pupils' understanding, as does the increasingly good use of interactive whiteboards to demonstrate ideas, and to motivate and inform pupils. The use of assessment is good overall but there are some inconsistencies. Teachers mark work well and some teachers share an evaluation of the lesson with pupils, engaging in very fruitful dialogue about what pupils need to focus on next. However,

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Grade: 2

this practice is not used sufficiently in some classes and teachers do not always underpin this process by evaluating their own lessons.

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Grade: 2

The curriculum is good. It is well planned to ensure a good balance of subjects and is strengthened by a wide range of well supported clubs and other activities. The choir's enthusiasm showed that they clearly enjoyed their lunchtime singing, for example. There are good opportunities for pupils to develop their English skills in other curriculum subjects, contributing to the high standards in this subject. The school has identified that opportunities to use mathematics and information communication technology (ICT) across the curriculum are not yet as good. The school has worked very hard, with success, to improve the teaching and assessment of science which is now of a good standard. School planning is good and consequently all groups of pupils make equally good progress through the school. However, the planning does not always detail explicitly enough the extra help to be given to pupils with particular needs or the challenge to

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Grade: 2

be provided for very able pupils. As a result, in lessons the progress of these pupils is uneven at times.

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Grade: 2

The school pays good attention to the safety, well being and needs of its pupils and, as a result, provides good care, guidance and support which enables them to do well. The school works well with a range of specialist agencies, as well as parents, to identify the needs of pupils with particular learning difficulties or disabilities or those at early stages of learning English as an additional language. As one parent wrote 'All the staff care greatly about the children and work with the parents to get the best out of them'. The school provides help in a variety of ways, including short focussed sessions with effective support staff to help pupils overcome particular difficulties in literacy or mathematics. These sessions are carefully monitored and are proving successful, although occasionally they mean that pupils miss out on aspects of their work in their classes. Pupils are involved well in setting individually challenging targets for themselves

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Grade: 2

in their 'Golden Books', but setting shorter term targets to monitor and improve pupils' progress in particular subjects is not yet consistent. 4 Inspection Report: St Edmund's Catholic Primary School, 28 °29 November 2006

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Grade: 2

Leadership and management are good. The headteacher has a clear vision of what needs to be done to raise standards of attainment even further. Under her guidance, a shared sense of purpose permeates the staff and a strong commitment to the inclusion of all learners in every aspect of the school's work is evident. The school's self-evaluation is good and has led to significant improvements in quality. Senior staff have a good understanding of the strengths of the school and are helping to bring about further improvement. For example, staff have shared good practice and have worked together effectively to improve teaching and the monitoring of progress in science. Similarly, the expertise of a dedicated and hard-working set of governors has been used to enhance provision for the school. Although there are satisfactory systems in place for the monitoring of teaching, the school has plans to make them more

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Grade: 2

systematic, and so more effective in improving teaching. Views of parents are actively sought through questionnaires and acted upon when appropriate, which contributes to parents' overriding feeling that the school is 'approachable'. 5 Inspection Report: St Edmund's Catholic Primary School, 28 °29 November 2006 .

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Grade: 2

set out in the guidance 'Complaints about school inspection', which is available from Ofsted’s website: www.ofsted.gov.uk. 6 Inspection Report: St Edmund's Catholic Primary School, 28 °29 November 2006

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Inspection judgements

School Overall Key to judgements: grade 1 is outstanding, grade 2 good, grade 3 satisfactory, and grade 4 inadequate

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Overall effectiveness

How effective, efficient and inclusive is the provision of education, integrated care and any extended services in meeting the needs of learners? How well does the school work in partnership with others to promote learners' well-being? 2 The quality and standards in the Foundation Stage 2 The effectiveness of the school's self-evaluation 2 The capacity to make any necessary improvements Yes Effective steps have been taken to promote improvement since the last inspection

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Achievement and standards

2 How well do learners achieve? 2 The standards 1 reached by learners How well learners make progress, taking account of any significant variations between groups of learners 2 How well learners with learning difficulties and disabilities make progress

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learners?

2 The extent of learners' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development 2 The behaviour of learners 2 The attendance of learners 2 How well learners enjoy their education 2 The extent to which learners adopt safe practices 2 The extent to which learners adopt healthy lifestyles 2 The extent to which learners make a positive contribution to the community How well learners develop workplace and other skills that will contribute to their future economic well-being

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and interests of learners?

2 How well are learners cared for, guided and supported?

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and interests of learners?

Grade 1 - Exceptionally and consistently high; Grade 2 - Generally above average with none significantly below average; Grade 3 - Broadly average to below average; Grade 4 - Exceptionally low. 7 Inspection Report: St Edmund's Catholic Primary School, 28 °29 November 2006

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and supporting all learners?

How effectively leaders and managers at all levels set clear direction leading to improvement and promote high quality of care and education How effectively performance is monitored, evaluated and improved to meet challenging targets How well equality of opportunity is promoted and discrimination tackled so that all learners achieve as well as they can How effectively and efficiently resources, including staff, are deployed to achieve value for money The extent to which governors and other supervisory boards discharge their responsibilities Yes Do procedures for safeguarding learners meet current government requirements? No Does this school require special measures? No Does this school require a notice to improve? 8 Inspection Report: St Edmund's Catholic Primary School, 28 °29 November 2006

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Text from letter to pupils explaining the findings of the inspection

Thank you for welcoming us to your school. Your headteacher told us that she was looking forward to our visit and your welcome made us feel that you were too. So thank you for that, and for helping us find out why you like your school. You and your parents told us that your school is a friendly and welcoming place where you do well and we agree. We could see that you enjoy your interesting lessons and all the other things you do at school and that your teachers take great care of you. Your teachers and all the other adults in the school work very well as a team and share their ideas and lessons well with each other. These are some of the reasons why you work hard, do well and enjoy your time at St Edmund's. One of the reasons that your teachers were looking forward to our visit is because they all want to make the school even better. We have suggested two ways that they could do this. You will have noticed that most of your teachers ask you what you think you have learned at the end

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Text from letter to pupils explaining the findings of the inspection

of your lessons. We have asked them to think about how they can use this information and their own ideas to help them decide exactly what they ask you to do in your next lesson. Your teachers are very good at thinking of things they would like to improve and working on these. Like them, we think it would be helpful if they checked up on these improvements a little more systematically to see how far they have got. We know how good you are at English but we realise that some of you won't be able to read and understand everything we have written in this letter. However, we are sure that the school council, buddies and the older pupils will be able to help out. For those of you who enjoy a challenge, you can always read the full report. Thank you again for your help and enjoy the holidays. Nicola Davies Lead inspector 9 Inspection Report: St Edmund's Catholic Primary School, 28 °29 November 2006

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