Shirley Infant School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

The school provides a good standard of education for its pupils.

There are clear signs of improvement taking place and there are a number of outstanding features. The outstanding features include aspects of pupils' personal development, such as their excellent knowledge of healthy living and their contribution to the community. The pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, and the partnerships that pupils benefit from so well, are both outstanding features.

Parents and carers appreciate the school's approach to education, with one writing that, 'The nurturing ethos, together with creative and exciting teaching, has meant that our child has thrived in his social, emotional and... academic development.' Children get off to a good start in the Reception Year and progress well. There has been a pattern of attainment at the end of Year 2 being well-above average.

A dip to average attainment in 2010 led the school to analyse the data. It identified particularly the need for more independent learning for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities. The issue has been tackled successfully.

Current work shows attainment in Year 2 is above the national average. Given their starting points, this constitutes good progress for pupils, including those known to be entitled to free school meals and those belonging to minority ethnic groups. Teaching is good overall.

Pupils benefit from very positive relationships with their teachers in lessons and are consequently prepared to give their views. Questioning challenges pupils, but there are inconsistencies between teachers in the extent to which they revisit and challenge individual pupils further or involve others in building on the initial answer. Pupils' behaviour is good.

In a few lessons in which pace slows, such as when pupils are left sitting 'on the mat' for too long, their concentration wanes and restlessness occurs. Teaching assistants are very well deployed, often dealing with a number of pupil groups during one lesson. This approach reflects the good use of assessment data by teachers in planning work for pupils of different abilities.

However, the regularity with which they plan sessions during lessons so that pupils can review their learning is inconsistent. Links with parents and carers are outstanding. One parent wrote 'We are very impressed with the school.

Staff are extremely committed, hardworking and approachable.' Adults work together very well as a team. Leadership has been distributed well and subject and phase leaders effectively support senior leaders in monitoring.

Accurate self-evaluation leads to very appropriate development priorities being identified and this has brought about improvement. Stakeholders are involved very well in development planning. Some inconsistencies between subject leaders' action plans are evident, in that sometimes objectives are insufficiently precise.

Consequently, difficulties exist when judging the degree of success of any changes introduced. Many members of the governing body, including the chair and vice-chair, are relatively new to their posts. Good sub-committee arrangements have been made to monitor the academic progress of the pupils and questions are asked of the school.

Not all of the governing body is trained in data interpretation and consequently the impact of the new committee arrangements is not maximised. Safeguarding and health and safety issues are monitored satisfactorily by the governing body. However, a few processes for monitoring safeguarding procedures are not as well developed as they might be.

For example, there is an insufficiently formal approach to involving and seeking the views of pupils over safety issues. Equal opportunities are exceptionally well monitored. The governing body drives improvement through agreeing challenging targets, which the school has met or exceeded.

Attendance is above average and has improved steadily as a consequence of school actions. The recovery to the current levels of attainment and progress bear witness to the impact of effective monitoring and management. Such factors support a good capacity to sustain improvement.

Information about the school

The very large majority of pupils in this larger-than-average infant school come from a White British background. There are a few pupils from different minority ethnic groups. The proportion of pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities is well below average, as is the number with a statement of special educational needs.

The largest group have moderate learning difficulties. A very small minority speak English as an additional language. The proportion of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals is well below average.

The Early Years Foundation Stage provision is provided in three Reception classes. The school has been nationally recognised through being awarded the national Healthy School and Eco-school awards. The substantive headteacher was appointed in April of this year after serving a period as acting headteacher, The school is part of the Upper Shirley Learning Community Trust which consists of a secondary, special and four other primary schools.

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