Ashburnham Community School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is an outstanding school. Outstanding senior leadership has secured significant improvements to the quality of teaching and pupils' achievement since the previous inspection. The executive headteacher has shared his considerable expertise very wisely.

As a result, he and the excellent associate headteacher have very successfully built a team of highly skilled and extremely effective leaders. Together they are passionate about creating a school where aspirations for pupils and staff are high. Governors share the same exacting drive for excellence.

They took decisive steps to improve their work following the previous inspection, developing into a very effec...tive group. They play their part in supporting and challenging the school's work particularly successfully. The rich range of subjects taught in the school, and the additional activities and experiences that enrich it, are helping to ensure that pupils have an excellent understanding of the world they live in.

Pupils love coming to school. They relish the different activities available and enjoy learning. Their behaviour is excellent at all times.

The school strongly promotes pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. Pupils get on very well together and show great respect towards the faiths and cultures of those from backgrounds different to their own. Racial harmony is a strength of the school.

Pupils feel very safe in school. Overall, pupils achieve extremely well. Standards have risen considerably across the school.

Pupils' progress in Key Stages 1 and 2 is outstanding. Children in the early years classes settle quickly, enjoy learning and are well prepared for starting Year 1. Increasing precision and accuracy in planning their next steps is helping to make sure that they make the same excellent progress as pupils elsewhere in the school.

Additional funds are used consistently well to help disadvantaged pupils achieve as well as, and often better than, their peers. Support provided for disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs is very effective; the same is true for those pupils who speak English as an additional language. As a result, these pupils make rapid progress.

Teaching is outstanding. Rigorous checks by leaders, followed by training and development where needed, mean teachers and additional adults demonstrate high levels of subject knowledge. Teachers know their pupils extremely well and use this knowledge particularly well when planning work that motivates, engages and challenges pupils.

Relationships between pupils and staff are excellent. Teachers set very high expectations for both pupils and themselves, fostering an atmosphere where pupils flourish and are always trying to do their best.

Information about this school

This is a smaller than average-sized primary school.

Children attend full time in the Nursery and Reception classes. Over three quarters of the pupils are from minority ethnic backgrounds and a large majority of these speak English as an additional language. A higher than average number of pupils join the school part way through their primary education.

Many of these pupils arrive with little or no English language skills and some have not had prior experience of schooling. The proportion of disadvantaged pupils supported by the pupil premium is above average, at twice the national figure. The pupil premium is additional government funding provided to give extra support to pupils known to be eligible for free school meals and to those who are looked after.

The proportion of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs is above average. The executive headteacher is the headteacher of Fox Primary School, judged as an outstanding school by Ofsted. It is part of a teaching school alliance and centre for teachers' professional development.

The school is led on a day-to-day basis by the associate headteacher. She is supported in this role by the assistant headteacher. Ashburnham and Fox schools currently form a 'soft' federation.

They are currently in the process of discussing this becoming a more formal federation from September 2015. Almost all the staff have joined the school in the last two years. The school meets the government's floor targets, which set the minimum expectations for pupils' attainment and progress.