Quarry Mount Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Short inspection of Quarry Mount Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 5 June 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 October 2015. This school continues to be good. The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection.

The previous headteacher left in December 2017 and your current deputy headteacher led the school for a short period of time. Following your appointment in February 2018, you acted quickly and reviewed all areas of the school, correctly i...dentifying and prioritising areas for improvement. You and your governors reviewed the school's middle leadership structure and besides reading, writing and mathematics, you put in place leadership roles for every other curriculum subject in the school.

As a result, leadership and management have been strengthened further. Governance is now a strength of the school. The knowledgeable chair of the governing body leads the governing body well.

Following a comprehensive skills audit, new governors were recruited to strengthen the governing body. Governors now have a wide range of skills and expertise and are routinely involved in school life. They provide robust challenge and support to leaders and know the strengths and weaknesses of the school very well.

There is strong capacity in the school's leadership to achieve the improvements you aspire to. You and your deputy headteacher are relentless in your determination for continuous school improvement. You always put the children and pupils in your school at the heart of what you and your staff do.

You acknowledge the highly transient pupil population in your school and the local community, but you do not let that affect your ambitions. Your passion has ensured that leadership is focused not only on the progress of pupils, but also on their whole school experience. As a result, the progress pupils make from their varying starting points has been strong, overall, since the last inspection.

School leaders have successfully dealt with the areas for improvement identified in the last inspection report. At the last inspection, you were asked to improve leadership and management further by developing the role of middle leaders. Leaders invested in targeted professional development for the staff leading English and mathematics in the school, with both gaining nationally recognised qualifications in middle leadership.

You established leadership roles for all other subjects in the school, including science, and ensured that staff leading these areas received appropriate training. As a result, middle leadership has been strengthened further and staff leading these areas have gained confidence and greatly improved their knowledge and skills. At the last inspection, school leaders were also asked to improve the quality of teaching and thereby further raise the attainment for all pupils and, in particular, the most able pupils.

Since your appointment, you have focused heavily on ensuring that staff receive the training required to plan learning activities that meet the needs of all pupils, including the most able pupils. You reviewed the teaching and learning of reading, writing and mathematics. As a result, the proportion of pupils achieving the higher standards is improving.

Safeguarding is effective. You and your deputy headteacher have ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and records are detailed. There is a strong safeguarding culture in the school.

Leaders and staff know the pupils well and the monitoring of pupils' welfare is thorough and detailed. You ensure that you carry out appropriate checks on the suitability of all staff who work with pupils. Your safeguarding governor monitors all areas of safeguarding thoroughly.

You have ensured that staff and governors receive appropriate training in child protection and are kept up to date through regular briefings. All staff know what to do if they have any concerns about the children and pupils in your school. You and your staff meet weekly and discuss all concerns raised about pupils.

As a result, the school shares information with external agencies effectively. Leaders follow up referrals diligently and monitor the impact of actions closely. Pupils report that they feel safe in school and know who to go to if they have any concerns.

They also know what to do to stay safe online. Pupils say that bullying is very rare, and are keen to tell me that: 'Bullying is illegal in our school!' When it does happen, teachers deal with it effectively. Inspection evidence and the views of parents and staff also support this.

Pupils are considerate, polite and respectful to each other and to staff. The relationships between staff and pupils are very strong. As a result, behaviour in lessons and conduct around the school environment are very good.

Inspection findings ? Since the last inspection, and your appointment in 2018, you and your leaders have strengthened further monitoring systems, which show that the quality of teaching is good and better in the vast majority of lessons. You have successfully widened the range of staff involved in the frequent monitoring of the quality of teaching and learning, based on a carefully planned schedule. You established a structure where every subject in school is led by a member of staff.

Together with your staff, you check the impact on the quality of teaching and the progress of pupils. Aspirations of what pupils can achieve is high. Most pupils take pride in their work and presentation is good in most books.

However, you agreed with me that more work is needed here to eliminate any remaining inconsistencies. ? You have reviewed the teaching of writing and mathematics and established the use of 'E tasks'. In writing, you introduced more challenging texts.

Pupils work on drafting and editing extended pieces of writing, using the writing skills they have acquired in English. In mathematics, all pupils, including the most able pupils, move on to harder tasks such as reasoning and problem-solving as soon as they are ready. As a result, the majority of teachers provide appropriate challenge for all groups of pupils, including the most able and disadvantaged pupils.

Teachers use targeted questioning effectively to probe understanding and support pupils' progress. We agreed that there is some inconsistency in the level of challenge provided by some teachers across the school and more work is needed in this area. ? Over recent years, leaders have put in place thorough systems for monitoring the progress pupils make.

Since your appointment, you have raised expectations of what pupils can achieve even further. There are clear lines of accountability between classroom teachers, middle leaders and senior leaders. Staff meet regularly to discuss the progress of pupils.

They put in place support for pupils who underperform, in the form of 'urgent lists'. Senior leaders monitor the impact of this support closely. As a result, the progress that pupils make at the end of key stage 2 in writing and mathematics has been improving year on year.

In 2018, standards were well above national averages. In reading, pupils' progress has improved significantly since the last inspection from well below average to average in 2018. Current school assessment information, inspection evidence and scrutiny of pupils' work indicate that this strong progress continues for the current pupils in the school.

The proportion of pupils achieving the higher standards at the end of Year 6 and Year 2 in reading, writing and mathematics has improved compared to last year. However, they remain below national averages and you have rightly identified this area as a continuous focus of school leaders' work. ? Since the last inspection, you have strengthened the pastoral team and raised the profile of attendance.

Working against a backdrop of high pupil mobility, the overall attendance of the school is in line with national averages. Your attendance team works hard to support identified pupils and their families in order to improve their attendance. This is paying dividends in most cases.

However, disadvantaged pupils remain more likely to be absent than their peers. Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: ? the persistent absence of all pupils, including the disadvantaged pupils, continues to diminish ? any remaining variation in the good quality of teaching and learning is eliminated further by ensuring that the presentation of pupils' work is consistently high across all classes ? all teachers consistently plan learning activities that meet the needs of the most able pupils, so that the proportion of pupils achieving the higher standards at the end of key stages 1 and 2 in reading, writing and mathematics continues to increase. I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children's services for Leeds.

This letter will be published on the Ofsted website. Yours sincerely Dimitris Spiliotis Her Majesty's Inspector Information about the inspection During the inspection, I met with you and your deputy headteacher, your middle leaders, staff and governors. I also held discussions with the school improvement adviser from the local authority.

I spoke to a range of staff, pupils and parents. I listened to pupils read and, together, we conducted tours of the school and lessons, looking at pupils' work and observing their learning. I also, alongside senior and middle leaders, conducted a scrutiny of pupils' work in a range of subjects.

I scrutinised and evaluated a range of documents relating to safeguarding, behaviour, attendance, school improvement and school's own surveys of parents' views. I took account of the six responses to Ofsted's online questionnaire, Parent View, including the four free-text responses from parents. I also took account of the 11 responses to the staff questionnaire.

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