St Saviour’s Church of England Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Short inspection of St Saviour's Church of England Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 12 February 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 April 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, your staff and governors have worked hard to achieve this and are ambitious and committed to making St Saviour's the best it can be. The governors play an active role in supporting the school to raise standards, through m...onitoring provision but also volunteering to help groups of learners if required.

The school is an established and respected part of the community and the small school feel is celebrated by parents and pupils alike who say, 'It has the elements of a village school… but with the diversity of families who mix well.' You have fostered the Christian ethos of nurturing and caring and this is evident in the school culture and how pupils behave towards each other. You have worked hard to develop the reading programme at your school and this is now a strength.

Together with your senior leaders, you have focused on developing the richness of the curriculum and take full advantage of being in London and embracing the opportunities that arise, such as links with local museums, art galleries and parks. These provide memorable experiences for pupils, who talk enthusiastically about the highlights and opportunities available to them. Safeguarding is effective.

Leaders and governors ensure that the culture of safeguarding and keeping children safe is of the upmost importance. This safeguarding culture extends to all staff. It is evident from the thorough record-keeping and processes in place, to conversations with children about keeping safe online, and how they have used this in real-life experiences at home.

You also offer e-safety workshops to parents. Staff have received up-to-date safeguarding training and can show the impact this has had with their heightened awareness of potential risks to pupils, including extremism and female genital mutilation. Pupils feel safe.

They say that behaviour is good at their school and they can rely on teachers to help if they have a problem. Recently, attendance figures have dipped slightly, but the school is using a range of strategies to address this, particularly with those families who are persistently absent. You ensure that attendance is closely monitored and tracked and have introduced a range of initiatives such as free access to the breakfast club, parents' meetings with the headteacher, and pupils being collected and brought into school.

These are meeting with varying degrees of success. Inspection findings ? We agreed four key lines of enquiry, the first three are taken from the previous inspection report. We chose these so that we could see how the school has moved forward on them.

• First of all, we looked at the early years foundation stage to ensure that work set for children to choose is always demanding and helps them move on quickly in their learning. The range of activities children access independently are stimulating, engaging and enriching. Children are keen to discuss what they are learning about and talked enthusiastically about Chinese New Year and the reasons why red and gold are used.

• Children get lots of opportunities to write and talk, which helps them develop their phonics knowledge. This also means children are practising and rehearsing sentence structure. Adults encourage the correct pencil or brush grip which means that fine motor control is well developed.

Physical development in the outside area when we visited involved 'crossing the river' by stepping through tyres. This was particularly motivating for boys, who thrived on the challenge. ? Children were well supported during a mathematical activity focusing on developing counting skills.

The children initially found this challenging, but swift intervention by adults and the use of coins, repetition and targeted support enabled rapid understanding and counting fluency. This was typical of the effective way that adults consolidate and extend children's learning. ? The next key line of enquiry looked at how the skills of middle leaders have been developed to ensure that further improvements are made in their areas of responsibility.

Your middle leaders are highly enthusiastic and committed to developing their subjects. They monitor their subjects effectively through looking at pupils' work and by supporting teachers with their planning. This means all curriculum subjects have a high status and outcomes are strong.

• Professional development is valued at your school. Teachers are encouraged to research and try new initiatives and learning styles. They pilot ventures such as incorporating new technology into the classroom.

Bringing visitors and specialists in to enhance learning and inspire engagement is also important here. Pupils enjoy their lessons and are keen to take risks in their learning. ? Our third line of enquiry was to consider how you ensure that the curriculum provides enough opportunities for pupils to extend their understanding, particularly in mathematics and science.

• The richness and diversity of your curriculum is a strength. Pupils praise the choice of clubs, challenging and fun lessons, educational visits and experiences and visitors to school. The music programme is widely celebrated, with 150 lessons a week.

This includes clubs and instrumental lessons which are popular and offered to all pupils individually and in small groups. Other opportunities include specialist-led ballet classes for key stage 2 pupils. Computing lessons led by external specialists for Year 6 promote an understanding of real-life computer programming expertise.

Latin lessons are also part of the timetable for Year 5 and you can learn to play chess from Year 3. Chess is a popular playtime activity as a result. ? Pupils find their lessons interesting and challenging, 'We have to ask lots of questions and then find the answers,' explained one infant pupil.

Science is a strength and topics are often taught practically. You invite relevant professionals to support teaching. For example, a baker demonstrated the science behind making bread and the properties of yeast.

Similarly, prior knowledge of graphs and data meant Year 6 pupils could quickly record and interpret data on eye colour comparisons between themselves and the rest of the world. ? The final line of enquiry looked at the current rates of progress in writing and mathematics for all groups, following the published outcomes in 2018. There are lots of opportunities for writing within English lessons as well as across the curriculum.

Expectations and outcomes are high. Self-editing is becoming embedded, especially in key stage 2, and pupils are aware of what they need to do to get better. This means current pupils are making better progress than in the past.

Explicit teaching of, for example, a variety of sentences using adjectives ending with 'ed' later transferred into pupils' independent writing where the richness of the language was demonstrated, 'Unnerved and threatened, perplexed and overwhelmed, Rose realised where she was.' Senior leaders now provide individualised writing opportunities for different groups of pupils to ensure that they can all reach their potential. As a result, the majority of Year 6 pupils are on track to reach expected outcomes, with 20% on track to achieve greater depth.

This is an improvement on previous writing outcomes. ? A key focus for the school is developing problem-solving within mathematics across all year groups and this was evident in all books sampled. Senior leaders have identified key pupils who need additional support.

They are now receiving sharply-focused interventions which are giving them the best possible chance of achieving end-of-year expectations. In Year 6, teaching is highly differentiated and there is appropriate challenge for all. However, this differentiated work needs to be further embedded in all classes in order to ensure that the most able pupils are suitably challenged on a regular basis.

• You have established targeted interventions for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities across all year groups. An example of the success of these interventions is evident in Year 3 and Year 4 and has led to all pupils making at least good progress. The progress of disadvantaged pupils is also closely monitored to ensure that it is good.

Effective interventions are in place to achieve the best possible outcomes. It is clear from your evidence that pupils who attend school regularly make good progress from their starting points. This is currently not the case for all pupils.

Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that they: ? fully embed the mathematical initiatives and interventions for pupils working at greater depth to ensure that all pupils reach their potential ? reduce the number of pupils who are persistently absent to ensure that they have the opportunity to achieve age-related expectations or better. I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the director of education for the Diocese of Southwark, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children's services for Lambeth. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website.

Yours sincerely Paula Craigie Ofsted Inspector Information about the inspection During the inspection I held meetings with you, your senior and middle leaders and your special educational needs coordinator. I also met with the chair of the governing body and held a telephone conversation with a representative from the local authority. A further seven governors attended the final feedback meeting.

I spoke with parents at the end of the day. I also took account of the 86 responses to Parent View, the online Ofsted questionnaire. I spoke informally with staff and children and analysed the seven responses to the staff survey and 36 pupil responses.

Together, we observed teaching and learning across the school. I looked at samples of pupils' work in a range of subjects and from all year groups. I also reviewed a wide range of documents including the school's self-evaluation, the single central record of recruitment checks and other documentation relating to safeguarding, as well as attendance figures.