Setting

Cambridge Education Demeter House Station Road Cambridge CB1 2RS T 01223 578500 F 01223 578501 Inspections_1@camb-ed.com Ofsted helpline 0845 640 4045

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Ms V Rolph Bosmere Community Primary School Quinton Road Needham Market Ipswich Suffolk IP6 8DA

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OFSTED MONITORING OF GRADE 3 SCHOOLS

Thank you for the help which you, your staff, governors and children gave when I visited your school on 24 May 2006, for the time you gave to our phone discussions and for the information which you provided before and during my visit.

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OFSTED MONITORING OF GRADE 3 SCHOOLS

Having considered carefully all the evidence presented by the school and the local authority together with evidence from Ofsted data I am of the opinion that at this time the school is making satisfactory progress on the issues identified at the last inspection.

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OFSTED MONITORING OF GRADE 3 SCHOOLS

Since the inspection, the school has made the most progress with tackling the key issue of improving children’s writing. Focussed training and regular staff discussions have helped improve teachers’ subject knowledge, planning, teaching approaches and assessments. There is a greater emphasis on giving children more writing opportunities and on displaying their written work. Teachers are beginning to track children’s progress more thoroughly and to set targets for improvement following work scrutinies. Marking has improved, although the quality continues to vary and still requires greater consistency. Overall, these developments have resulted in an improvement in writing standards. The latest teacher assessments for Year 2 and Year 4 indicate that greater proportions of children are reaching the higher Levels 3 and 4. We discussed how adopting a more rigorous progress tracking system for each class would help to identify which children were making less than

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OFSTED MONITORING OF GRADE 3 SCHOOLS

expected progress. Less progress has been made with providing more opportunities for children to use ICT in their work in other subjects. The delay in installing new computers in the ICT suite has contributed to this. Staff believe that through regular ICT lessons and access to better software, children’s computer skills are improving. However, there are no progress records to substantiate this view. Teachers are beginning to plan opportunities for children to use ICT in their learning in other subjects but this is at an early stage in most classes. One good example was seen in Year 3/4 where children had used ICT to gather and interrogate data, and to produce graphs and charts as part of a cross-subject project. We discussed whether the school’s involvement in the local learning network might be slowing down progress with tackling this key issue.

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OFSTED MONITORING OF GRADE 3 SCHOOLS

More efficient systems are now in place for monitoring attendance. Parents are contacted following a child’s first day of absence and records are kept of children whose attendance is lower than average. The school has worked well with the educational welfare service to improve the attendance of a small group of persistent non-attenders. Clearer guidelines on holiday entitlement and authorised absences have been sent to parents. Further improvements are to be introduced which will enable the school to monitor the weekly attendance of individual children and classes. We discussed whether raising the expectations for regular attendance among the children, and improving the system of incentives and rewards would help improve attendance further.

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OFSTED MONITORING OF GRADE 3 SCHOOLS

I hope you find this feedback helpful as you continue to work on the issues identified in your inspection.

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