King’s Academy College Park (Infant)

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

The school provides an outstanding education for its pupils. Underpinning all school actions are the senior leadership's extremely high expectations and a continuing emphasis on school improvement. The excellent leadership of the headteacher, supported by the highly effective governing body and senior leadership team, has established a very challenging learning environment where attainment is consistently high.

The school's judgement on the personal development of pupils is accurate; it is outstanding. For example, pupils have an excellent understanding of how to stay safe and apply their knowledge to the internet as well as when using the school's swimming pool. One parent summed up the views of many... when writing, that this is,'an excellent school that makes a huge effort to keep learning interesting and fun'.

The pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is outstanding. For example, they reflect on personal and social issues and their learning during lessons, and are highly committed to their 'partner' charity for the blind. The excellent behaviour of pupils undoubtedly contributes to their outstanding progress.

The outstanding curriculum manifestly meets the different needs of the pupils, and provides them with a very wide range of memorable experiences. A parent wrote that, 'My child comes home daily with something new and wonderful that she has learnt. A friendly, inspirational school.'

Children get off to the best of starts in the outstanding Early Years Foundation Stage. Attainment by the end of Year 2 has been high for the past four years. Given their starting points, this constitutes outstanding progress for pupils, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

Boys' attainment in writing, while above average, was below that of girls. As a result of school actions, including a rigorous tracking of their progress, the gap closed in 2010, and the number of higher grades for boys was above that of girls. The monitoring of teaching and learning is being used as a highly effective strategy for making improvements.

Outstanding teaching delivers challenging lessons where learning is made fun through the use of a wide variety of approaches including games and problem-solving activities. Assessment is accurate and helps teachers to consistently plan lessons that challenge pupils of different abilities. Targets for pupils to work towards are regularly set and referred to by teachers in lessons.

Past observations revealed that the pupils were not very motivated by the target system. Typically, for this school, a new strategy was introduced based around the pupils 'collecting' target cards that get progressively more challenging but simultaneously allow them to complete a set of cartoon figures. Their comments, such as 'They're great', 'Cool' and 'I like getting the targets', reflect the success of the initiative.

It also demonstrates the school's commitment to improvement. The pupils are able to concentrate on their work because of the excellent levels of care, guidance and support provided by the school. All adults, including learning support assistants and the administrative and caretaking staff, ensure that the pupils are cared for extremely well.

The Lunchtime Play and Welfare Manager ensures pupils have a range of activities to keep them occupied during breaks, and contributes significantly to meeting the school mission of 'Children Playing, Improving and Smiling'. An embedded monitoring programme enables accurate self-assessment to take place. This includes the judgement that community cohesion is good.

A thorough audit of provision has taken place, and some good links have been made to a contrasting British school and another in France. The school acknowledges there is more to do to extend these links to further develop the pupils' knowledge of life in contrasting communities. The rigorous programme of self-evaluation leads to highly accurate development planning.

The governing body is fully able to contribute to this because of its excellent programme of monthly focused visits coupled with link governor visits to classes. One class is keeping up-to-date on the foreign travels of 'their' governor through emails and postcards. Such successful initiatives, along with sustained high attainment and progress levels, improvements since the last inspection to teaching and the curriculum, and the excellent use of partnerships, including those with parents and carers, all support an outstanding capacity to further improve the school.

Information about the school

Pupils in this larger-than-average infant school come from a predominantly White British background. The next largest minority ethnic group are pupils from an Asian or Asian British-Bangladeshi heritage. The number of pupils for whom English is an additional language is well below average.

The proportion of pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities is just above average, and the number with a statement of special educational needs is as expected nationally. The main groups consist of pupils with moderate learning difficulties. The proportion of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals is just above average, and increasing.

The Early Years Foundation Stage provision is provided in four Reception classes. The school is part of the 'North Island Community Improvement Partnership' (NICIP) which comprises 22 local schools working together with other agencies to meet the Extended Schools and Every Child Matters agendas. The school holds the national Activemark and Eco- School awards.