Acre Heads Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Short inspection of Acre Heads Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 14 March 2018, 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 January 2013. This school continues to be good. The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection.

The previous inspection asked you to raise achievement in mathematics. It also asked you to strengthen the quality of leadership by developing the role of middle leaders. The training in mathematics that you gave to staff has improved the...ir skills.

Middle leaders have supported this training programme by giving teachers high-quality feedback on their teaching. Opportunities to share expertise in mathematics teaching with your partner schools has ensured that assessments are accurate. I could see in pupils' books and the work they were doing in mathematics that this has paid dividends.

Pupils now use their mathematics skills confidently to solve problems. Moreover, pupils' enthusiasm for mathematics was very obvious in class. However, you agreed that challenge could be higher, particularly for most-able pupils to allow them to reach higher standards.

The previous inspection also asked you to improve the skills of middle leaders. I could see how your middle leaders now take a lead in holding teachers to account through regular meetings. Achievement information is used well in these meetings as a starting point for discussions about individual pupils' progress.

Governors explained to me how each of them is attached to a middle leader. This ensures that they are kept fully informed of pupils' progress and hold leaders well to account. You have maintained an ethos where success is celebrated and talents nurtured.

Parents are overwhelmingly supportive of the school and pupils' commitment to learning is reflected in their high attendance. Safeguarding is effective. The leadership team has ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and that there is a strong culture of safeguarding in the school.

Training for staff is frequent, thorough and in line with the latest government guidance. All staff see it as their responsibility to be vigilant for any signs which might give them cause for concern. Weekly information-sharing meetings ensure that there is a proactive rather than reactive approach to keeping children safe in school.

The pupils I spoke to understand how to use the internet safely and told me that bullying is a rarity. This is verified in your records, showing you have very few instances of bullying. Parents who responded to the online questionnaire (Parent View) expressed no concerns about bullying or behaviour.

However, the documentation relating to safeguarding is not so strong. On the day of the inspection, the school's safeguarding policy did not reflect current government guidance. Moreover, child protection records were incomplete.

This was rectified by the end of the inspection day. Inspection findings ? I was curious to see if mathematics is taught well and leads to pupils making good progress. In our visits to classrooms it was clear that pupils were making good progress.

We saw how some work is unnecessarily repetitive and so sometimes does not challenge the most able pupils. However, pupils become increasingly confident in using numbers over time. We discussed how you have developed materials to help parents support their children in mathematics at home.

This too is helping to raise achievement. ? Our visits to early years to see mathematics being taught showed that children learn to engage with and enjoy the subject early on. We saw how children were encouraged to talk about how they worked mathematics problems out.

This also develops children's speaking and listening skills. ? I looked into your teaching of phonics. This was because there has been a slight decline in the proportions of pupils meeting the required standard over the past three years.

The teaching we saw in Year 1 classrooms had pace and challenge. Pupils then apply their phonic skills to writing confidently. When I listened to pupils reading, pupils used the techniques they had been taught to read unfamiliar words.

• I was interested to see how well middle leaders contributed to school improvement. Achievement information is used well by middle leaders, who analyse the progress of different groups of pupils carefully. The leaders I met were able to give me detailed information about boys, girls, disadvantaged and most-able pupils in each subject.

This has enabled them to look carefully at the curriculum to see what improvements are necessary. For example, some underachievement of girls in mathematics has been addressed through single-sex teaching. ? A strength of the school development plan is how well middle and senior leaders evaluate the effectiveness of their actions.

This makes it abundantly clear at any point in the year what is working well and what needs further attention. Governors appreciate this level of detail which enables them to support and challenge school leaders well. Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: ? pupils, particularly the most able, are challenged in mathematics so that attainment rises further ? safeguarding documentation is robust and up to date with government requirements.

I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children's services for East Riding of Yorkshire. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website. Yours sincerely Robert Jones Ofsted Inspector Information about the inspection During the inspection I met with you and your senior leadership team, four members, including the chair, of the governing body and a representative from the local authority.

I spoke to six pupils from Year 6 over lunchtime and listened to two Year 2 pupils reading. While in classrooms I observed teaching, spoke to pupils and looked through the work in their books. I considered a range of documentation, including the 52 responses to Parent View, the school development plan, governance documents, the summary of self-evaluation, the tracking of pupils' progress and safeguarding documents.