Goodmayes Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Short inspection of Goodmayes Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 22 March 2018 with Jeffery Quaye, Ofsted Inspector, 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 October 2013.

This school continues to be good. The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You, senior leaders and governors are determined to make the school the best it can be.

You have successfully created a positive culture in which pupils learn and enjoy their education. The ethos of the... school is reflected in its motto, 'Together we can achieve excellence.' Your enthusiasm and commitment to the school and your high expectations of everyone is evident.

There is a strong team spirit at Goodmayes. All the staff who responded to the survey said that they are proud to work at the school, and that they enjoy their jobs. Relationships between staff and pupils are warm and supportive.

You have taken effective action to address the areas for improvement that were identified at the last inspection. Pupils of different abilities are now provided with learning tasks that are better matched to their needs. They are given opportunities to work independently in order to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding.

There is good guidance for pupils about how to improve their work. Pupils now understand the feedback systems that their teachers provide. Governors are committed, skilled and knowledgeable.

They bring a wealth of expertise and experience to the school. They offer a highly effective balance of support and challenge. When governors visit, they follow up areas for improvement.

Minutes of governors' meetings detail the range of questions they ask, as they challenge leaders and hold them to account for pupils' outcomes. Pupils are polite and courteous and behave very well. They offer a warm welcome to visitors and pupils who are new to the school.

Pupils have a good understanding of tolerance, and mutual respect is evident in the way they relate to one another. They enjoy their learning and work together effectively. Pupils who spoke to me unanimously agreed that they would not change anything about their school, as it is such a welcoming place to be.

Safeguarding is effective. There is a strong culture of safeguarding across the school. Leaders, including governors, ensure that the school meets its statutory duties.

High-quality, regular training for all staff ensures that they know how to keep children safe and what to do if they have a concern about a child. Leaders make thorough checks on the suitability of staff to work in the school and keep precise records of their actions. The school's safeguarding governor visits the school regularly to check these records and make sure that procedures have been followed diligently.

A comprehensive induction plan helps new staff understand the high focus given to safeguarding in this school. Policies and procedures are securely embedded, and referrals are made in a timely way. As a result, vulnerable children and families are supported effectively.

Pupils know how to keep themselves safe. Teachers make sure that pupils develop their skills and understanding of e-safety and healthy lifestyles. Pupils know about different ways of protecting themselves when using the internet.

Inspection findings ? At the start of the inspection, we agreed a number of lines of enquiry that we would consider to determine whether the school remained good. Firstly, we reviewed how effectively girls are supported to achieve well in the early years. This was because a lower proportion of girls than boys achieved the expected standard in the early learning goals in 2017.

• Leaders know children's abilities and plan provision that meets their different learning needs, including the most able, very well. Leaders ensure that children from different nurseries who have not begun to learn phonics, for example, are supported to catch up. Girls and boys engage in purposeful activities and show strong levels of independence and resilience.

Work seen suggests that girls are making similar good progress as boys. Leadership of the early years is strong and continues to drive forward improvements. ? We also considered the quality of teaching in phonics as a line of enquiry.

This was because the proportion of pupils who reached the expected standard in their Year 1 phonics screening check has been inconsistent since the previous inspection and was below the national average in 2017. ? Raising the consistency of expectation and the quality of teaching in phonics have been areas you identified in your school improvement plan this year. Training is under way for staff, and additional lessons and support are given to pupils who need to improve.

• In class, pupils use their knowledge of sounds well to spell increasingly difficult words, and this continues throughout the school. However, you recognise that more challenging opportunities are not developed sufficiently well. At times, some pupils repeat work that they are already familiar with and this slows the progress that they can make.

Additional adults are not always used precisely enough in lessons so that even more pupils can achieve as well as possible. ? We looked at whether current pupils are making good progress in reading and writing, with a focus on disadvantaged pupils. We chose to look at this area because published data shows that, for the last two years, disadvantaged pupils' attainment by the end of key stage 2 has been low.

Several actions have been carried out to improve the quality of pupils' reading and writing. Teachers are enthused by new approaches introduced to support pupils because of the positive impact they are having. For example, teachers have used high-quality books and other texts as stimuli to encourage pupils to want to write.

This has worked well, and pupils are now much more interested in writing and are keen to be authors. However, not all pupils are making rapid progress in writing or getting to the higher levels. This is because teachers do not consistently require pupils to practise writing longer pieces of work.

As a result, pupils do not all have the stamina to write at length. Leaders agreed that this was an area to continue to improve and one they had recently identified. ? Finally, we explored how well pupils are supported and encouraged to attend school.

This line of enquiry arose from historical information showing that not all pupils attended school as often as they should. We looked at rates of attendance and, specifically, the attendance of disadvantaged pupils and those who have special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities. Previously, these groups have had particularly high rates of absence.

• Leaders are aware of the need to improve attendance, and rigorous procedures are in place to establish the reasons for any pupil's absence. You and your leaders are quick to address attendance issues, for example through staff phoning parents at the start of the day when pupils do not turn up for school. ? Your focused actions are starting to have a positive impact in some cases and the attendance figures for the school, and particularly for disadvantaged pupils and those who have SEN and/or disabilities, are starting to improve.

Still, there are a number of disadvantaged pupils who, for various and sometimes complex reasons, are regularly absent. You know that there is still work to do to further improve the attendance of these pupils. Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: ? a higher proportion of all pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils, achieve greater depth in reading and writing ? the proportion of children who reach the required standard in the phonics screening check by the end of Year 1 increases and is more consistently in line with the national average ? attendance improves so that it is consistently at or above the national averages for all groups of pupils, particularly for disadvantaged pupils.

I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children's services for Redbridge. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website. Yours sincerely Michelle Thomas Ofsted Inspector Information about the inspection Inspectors carried out the following activities: a scrutiny of the single central record of recruitment checks and other documents relating to safeguarding and child protection, including the school's safeguarding policy and other policies relating to governance, pupils' behaviour and attendance; meetings with the headteacher, other senior leaders, two governors and a phone call with a local authority representative; a review of the school's self-evaluation documents and improvement plans, observations of learning across the school, and work analysis of pupils' writing, mathematics and wider curriculum books; learning walks and visits to classrooms with you and other senior leaders to look at the impact of teaching and assessment on pupils' learning and progress; conversations with a group of pupils, with pupils in lessons and listening to pupils read; conversations with parents in the playground before school and a scrutiny of 34 parental responses to Ofsted's online questionnaire, Parent View, as well 28 free-text responses from parents.