Sydenham Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is an outstanding school. The school benefits from outstanding leadership at all levels.

Senior leaders and governors have made excellent use of federation links and training to improve teaching and standards across the school. Staff are ambitious, reflective and self-critical. They strive continuously to improve their practice.

Teamwork and morale are very strong. The school's curriculum provides pupils with many exciting opportunities to develop their knowledge, understanding and decision-making skills. Occasionally, pupils choose tasks that do not help them make fast progress.

Pupils get off to an excellent start in Reception and the early yea...rs provision is outstanding. All groups of pupils make rapid progress, especially in Key Stage 2. Standards are a little above average by the end of Year 6.

Pupils achieve well in other subjects, such as art. Staff use their expert knowledge of what pupils can already do to plan work which stretches pupils of all abilities. Pupils who need extra help to ensure they achieve well receive skilled support.

Staff have high expectations of all pupils. They explain new ideas clearly and question pupils expertly to develop their speaking skills and to check on their learning. Across Key Stage 1 pupils make faster progress in writing and mathematics than in reading.

Staff develop pupils' personal qualities and teamwork skills to the full. This enables pupils to support each other very successfully in all areas of school life. The school makes exemplary use of the 'pupil voice' to foster pupils' sense of personal responsibility and commitment to their learning.

Pupils' behaviour in lessons and around school is excellent. The school promotes pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development exceptionally well. It ensures that pupils develop a keen awareness of diversity and life in modern Britain.

Robust safeguarding arrangements ensure that pupils are well cared for and know how to stay safe.

Information about this school

The school is slightly larger than the average-sized primary school. The number of pupils on roll has increased by 40% in the last four years.

There are two classes in each year group from Reception up to Year 2. There is one class in each year group in Key Stage 2. Children in the Early Years Foundation Stage are taught full time in two Reception classes.

The Sydenham Children's Centre and the Purple Playhouse, a pre-school nursery, share the same site. Both are managed separately from the school and were not inspected as part of this inspection. The 'Early Birds' breakfast club and the 'Butterflies' after-school club are managed by the governing body.

Both clubs were included in this inspection. The specially resourced provision for pupils with special educational needs (the specific learning difficulties unit), which was operating at the time of the previous inspection, is now closed. About one half of pupils are White British.

About one quarter of pupils are of Indian heritage. The remaining pupils come from a variety of minority ethnic backgrounds. Some pupils in the younger age-groups are at an early stage of speaking English as an additional language.

The proportion of disadvantaged pupils supported by the pupil premium, which is additional funding for pupils known to be eligible for free school meals and those looked after by the local authority, is slightly below average at one in five. The proportion of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs is above average at one in four. The school formed a 'hard' federation with Lighthorne Heath Primary School in September 2010.

Lighthorne Heath was separately inspected in September 2012. The two schools share a governing body and members of the senior leadership team work across the two schools. The executive headteacher is a National Leader of Education (NLE).

In this capacity she works for the local authority as an associate learning improvement officer, giving support to schools that were judged 'Requiring improvement' or 'Satisfactory' at their most recent Ofsted inspection. The school is a designated National College Development School, in recognition of its work in training staff to undertake leadership positions. The school meets the government's current floor standards, which set the minimum expectations for pupils' attainment and progress in reading, writing and mathematics at the end of Year 6.

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