Hutton Cranswick Community Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Short inspection of Hutton Cranswick Community Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 3 July 2019, 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 May 2015. This school continues to be good. The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection.

You have led the school since April 2018 following the departure of the previous headteacher. Following your appointment, you have acted swiftly to review all aspects of the school, identifying where developments were needed to ...strengthen and improve the quality of education. With the support of governors and your senior leadership team, you have put in place clear procedures and processes that have brought greater consistency to the school's work and higher expectations of pupils and staff.

The changes have been subtle, and in discussions, staff, governors and the school's local authority link officer referred to them as 'tweaks' which have helped to strengthen aspects of teaching and learning, behaviour and the welfare and safety of pupils. Staff, parents, carers and pupils welcome the changes and are of the view that they have helped to make the school even better. It is clear from the latest Parent View survey and my discussions with parents and pupils that they feel a great affinity with and pride in their school and they would not hesitate to recommend it to any new parent or child moving to the area.

In lessons and around the school, pupils conduct themselves well. They are friendly and keen to help others. They are clear about the expectations the school has of them.

Teachers manage behaviour well in lessons, rarely having to raise their voice. They apply the school policy to reward good behaviour and to warn pupils when their behaviour begins to fall below expectations. Pupils felt that they are treated fairly and also praised the school's reward system.

Governors have a good understanding of what is taking place in school through their oversight of the school improvement plan. Their visits to school and links to staff curriculum teams enable them to see at first hand, through termly visits, how staff are implementing new approaches to planning and assessing the curriculum. Governors have a secure knowledge of the difference the school is making to pupils through their careful examination of data, checks on procedures and discussions with pupils.

At the last inspection, the school was asked to improve the quality of teaching to raise achievement further, and to improve leadership and management by developing the role of middle leaders and subject leaders. Since your appointment you have invested resources and time to develop these important areas of the school's work. The school's current improvement plan shows that considerable efforts continue to be made.

Given the importance of this work, and particularly actions taken to support reading and writing, they became key lines of enquiry for this inspection. Safeguarding is effective. Safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and a culture of safeguarding is established across the school.

Checks on the recruitment and vetting of staff meet statutory requirements. The safeguarding governor is assiduous in checking that the single central record is up to date. Staff training is undertaken annually for all staff who come into contact with pupils.

Staff know about their responsibilities, are aware of the signs that children may be at risk and are clear about procedures for getting further help. The designated safeguarding lead and deputies properly log records of referrals and cases. The school helps children and their families who need help to access services providing specialist support.

Staff, parents and pupils are all in agreement that the school does all it can. Pupils have a good understanding of risks. They know how to keep themselves safe when using social media or in an emergency situation such as a fire.

Pupils say that they know these things because : staff regularly cover such issues with them and they also have regular fire practices at school. Inspection findings ? Since the previous inspection, curriculum expertise has been strengthened further through the professional development of staff. The school currently has three subject leaders of education (SLEs) in mathematics, English and early years education as a result of the investment made in training and strong appointments.

• With the support of governors and your new leadership team, you have successfully expanded curriculum leadership responsibilities throughout the school. You have ensured that each curriculum subject has a designated lead teacher, and a structure of curriculum teams has been introduced since the last inspection. Through these, teachers work together to identify the skills they want pupils to acquire and plan a programme of work for each year group.

• Teachers feel supported as a result of the collaborative approach and believe that their workload is managed well because they are given time to plan and complete tasks. ? Although the school is developing a structured approach to the curriculum, there is still more to do to enable pupils to acquire a strong base of knowledge in each subject and to progressively meet more complex concepts and ideas. Leaders have established this in mathematics and are starting to do this more securely in reading and writing, but have yet to do this in other subjects.

• Pupils enjoy their work. Topic books and displays of work show that they are encountering interesting experiences and projects in a broad range of subjects such as science, history, geography and religious education (RE). ? Leaders' monitoring of teaching and learning tends to focus on teachers and whether they are implementing curriculum plans and agreed methods and approaches.

Leaders have been quick to identify where staff need additional help and support and have ensured that they receive it from colleagues within school or external training. ? In discussions during this inspection, senior leaders were aware of the need to refine and develop the way they monitor the quality of the school's work to focus more securely on the impact it has on pupils' learning. However, this focus is not fully embedded in the monitoring undertaken by the curriculum teams.

• Since the last inspection, you have strengthened the teaching of reading and writing. For example, the use of reading circles and the use of books that appeal to boys are helping to encourage more boys to develop the habit of reading for pleasure. ? The introduction of activities using outdoor and woodland areas is providing more stimulation for writing.

Boys who struggled to write are now writing at length, inspired by the activities. Pupils work productively in lessons and their books show that they are using more complex words and sentence structures. ? Although daily spelling challenges take place in most classes, spelling is not as strong as it should be.

Leaders have plans to introduce more effective teaching strategies to improve pupils' spelling accuracy. ? As pupils move through the school, the expectations change; they learn more in reading, writing and mathematics and they are confident learners. In discussions about their work, pupils found key pieces of work in their books where their teacher had highlighted their strengths, but, importantly, pupils identified what they could improve.

Pupils were proud of making gains in their knowledge and understanding in subsequent work. ? Pupils' attitudes to learning are strong. They settle quickly to tasks and concentrate for sustained periods.

Pupils are keen to learn and do their best. For example, Year 1 pupils want to improve to be a 'handwriting hero', and Year 6 pupils enthusiastically review their writing to 'uplevel' it by choosing an even better word to express their ideas. Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: ? progression in pupils' knowledge and understanding in subjects is sequenced carefully in curriculum planning to deepen learning and enable children to achieve more ? monitoring is focused on what children are learning and remembering.

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 Gina White Her Majesty's Inspector Information about the inspection During the inspection, I met with you and your deputy headteacher, middle leaders, as well as teachers from the communications and the humanities curriculum teams.

I also held discussions with governors and met with the school improvement adviser from the local authority. I met formally with a group of pupils from Year 3 to Year 6 and spoke to staff, pupils and parents at lunchtime and after school. Together, we undertook lesson observations and work scrutiny of pupils' books.

I evaluated a range of documents, including school plans, self-evaluations, the school's own survey of parents' views, and documents relating to safeguarding. I took account of the 39 responses to Ofsted's online survey, Parent View, and the 19 responses to Ofsted's survey of staff views. There were no responses to the pupil survey.