Disley Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Short inspection of Disley Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 8 March 2017, 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 November 2011. This school continues to be good.

The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection because you have encouraged all staff to commit together to make the school better, 'hand in hand promoting excellence'. Pupils are happy at this school. As one pupil told me, 'Every day we come in with a smiley face.'

Their excellent conduct... was seen throughout my visit as they welcomed me to their classrooms and held doors open as they greeted me around school. Pupils show respect for all adults and pupils on site and have a good understanding of equality and tolerance of differences. They told me, 'Everyone here is treated the same as everyone else', and 'People can be whatever they want to be and would be supported in those choices.'

Parents told me they are highly supportive of the school and had very few concerns to share with me. They told me that teachers are always available to talk with them at the start or end of the school day, and that any worries they bring to the attention of teachers are very quickly 'put to rest'. You quickly tackled the recommendations from the last inspection to improve information and communication technology (ICT) provision and aspects of community cohesion, and you have continued to bring about further improvements to the curriculum in response to other national changes.

As a result, you have made sure the school is 'outward looking', keeps pace with change and provides a good standard of education within the available budget. Your systematic plan to enable pupils to use ICT skills across the curriculum was implemented immediately after the last inspection. You are now reviewing ICT provision, moving away from personal computers and increasing the use made of mobile technology such as laptops and tablet computers, so that pupils can use these resources more easily in their work.

Pupils are introduced to coding, which prepares them well for further study in secondary school. Although your links with a Kenyan school were praised in the previous inspection, you have had to modify this work due to the costs involved. You continue to explore other ways to expand pupils' understanding of other communities in the United Kingdom through school trips and visits which, pupils say, they greatly enjoy.

As well as looking at how you have tackled the recommendations from the previous inspection, I wanted to find out about your work to improve the teaching of writing across the school, particularly for boys, and to find out how you use assessment to identify which pupils need more support and what is done to provide this. Safeguarding is effective. Leaders have ensured that safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and records are detailed and of high quality.

Governors very recently commissioned an external review of safeguarding procedures in the school to find out if there are any improvements that can be made. The report of this review had not been presented to governors at the time of my visit, but leaders await this with enthusiasm, eager to act on any recommendations. Leaders have successfully secured a safeguarding culture in school because they make sure that all staff receive regular training and, as a result, staff know the correct procedures to follow if they have a concern about a pupil.

Risk assessments for all trips and other activities are carried out to make sure that pupils are kept safe. This includes a consideration of the risks involved by allowing adults access to the site during the school day to access the private day care provider's premises that share the grounds. Safety is given a high priority by pupils.

Members of the 'Safe at School' (SAS) squad explained their responsibility to immediately report any unsafe situations they come across, or are reported to them by other pupils. For example, they do not like the way some parents park their cars on the footpath outside school which, they say, creates a hazard. Pupils say they are safe at school and have a good understanding of how to keep themselves safe when using the internet, for example.

Inspection findings ? In September, you introduced ways to tackle weaknesses in writing, particularly for boys, following your review of the 2016 key stage 2 test scores. Some early signs of improvement are seen in the quality of pupils' writing in their books, although this is not yet reflected in stronger progress seen from teachers' termly assessments. You explained that this is because teachers are over-cautious in their assessments, especially for the most able.

• Some middle leaders are new to leading their area because you restructured subject leader roles in September. Although these leaders review assessment information and check work in pupils' books, they are still developing their leadership skills and have not yet had the opportunity to observe teaching and learning across the school, related to their subject responsibilities. ? Teachers know the pupils in their class exceptionally well, including pupils' interests.

Teachers plan ideas for writing which are of interest to pupils, such as living in the Stone Age or the Viking invasion: this is helping to maintain boys' interest in their writing. Teachers plan trips and visits, including from a visiting poet, to further stimulate ideas. ? You have given a high priority to improving pupils' speaking and listening skills.

Teachers are becoming skilled in using questioning to encourage pupils to share their ideas with a partner or the class. As a result, pupils are better prepared to record their ideas in their writing. ? Teachers and leaders use assessment information well to identify when progress slows, based on pupils' targets.

Teachers work collaboratively with classroom assistants to plan tasks and activities to fill gaps in learning and help pupils to catch up quickly. This support is effective, especially in reading. Where pupils did not meet the required standard in the phonics screening re-test in Year 2, intensive support was provided and, after a slow start, pupils are now making rapid progress in their reading.

• The most able readers in key stage 1 and key stage 2 explained how they prefer to read their own books from home. This sometimes leads to pupils reading a very narrow range of books, such as by a particular author. As a result, some pupils do not have enough opportunity to read books from different genres.

No check is carried out to make sure that books from home are suitably challenging for them, which sometimes leads to pupils reading books that are too easy. ? Pupils told me how much they enjoy solving problems in mathematics. Key stage 2 pupils particularly enjoy 'murder mystery' problems planned by teachers, and say that these are helping them to use their mathematics skills in different situations.

• You have introduced a series of 'non-negotiables' to raise standards across the school, including uniform and attendance. As a result, not only has attendance improved but there has been a marked improvement in punctuality. Very few pupils now arrive late for school in a morning.

You have high expectations for good attendance. When attendance falls below 95%, you carefully monitor this very small number of pupils where absence is due to illness and unauthorised absence to an extended family holiday. ? Governors know the school well because of the detailed information you provide to them about the school's strengths and weaknesses.

Governors keep their own training up to date to make sure that they have the right knowledge and skills to hold leaders to account. For example, governors have recently completed training in safeguarding and some governors have attended courses in using assessment information and in financial planning. ? No recent responses to Ofsted's parent questionnaire, Parent View, were available before the inspection and some required information for parents was missing on the school's website.

I therefore wanted to find out how governors gather and act on the views of parents, and how they check that the school's website provides parents with the information they need to know. Governors have not actively gathered and acted on the views of parents since their last survey in autumn 2015. More regular checks on parents' views should be done, especially in response to significant changes in school.

Deficiencies of the school's website were tackled during the inspection, such as the absence of the charging and remissions policy. Next steps for the school Leaders and governors should ensure that: ? teachers become more confident in the assessment of standards in writing, especially for the most able, so that their assessments are accurate and reliable ? pupils, particularly the most able, are encouraged to read a greater range of books and always at an appropriate level of difficulty for them ? subject leaders further develop their skills in the monitoring of teaching in their area ? governors' work with parents becomes more rigorous by gathering parents' views and acting on these as appropriate, and making sure that the school's website provides parents with the required information. I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children's services for Cheshire East.

This letter will be published on the Ofsted website. Yours sincerely Denah Jones Her Majesty's Inspector Information about the inspection A range of activities were carried out during this inspection to gather information on the key lines of enquiry. For example, I met with yourself, your deputy headteacher and staff as well as a group of governors.

I spoke with a representative from the local authority in a telephone conversation and talked with parents as they collected their children at the end of the school day. I talked with pupils when you joined me in visits to lessons, listened to pupils read and met formally with a group of pupils which included members of the school council, eco-warriors and the SAS squad. A range of documentation was also scrutinised to find out about your monitoring of teaching, learning and assessment, and safeguarding procedures in the school.

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