Saxon Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Short inspection of Saxon Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 12 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 June 2015.

This school continues to be good. The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. During this time, the school has continued to grow towards having two classes in each year group by September 2019.

You are managing this change well, giving careful thought to the school's evolving leadership and systems, so that pupils' welfare ...and achievement remain at the centre of the school's work. As a result, pupils enjoy their time at Saxon, and are prepared well, academically and emotionally, for moving on to secondary school at the end of Year 6. Your actions to address the areas for improvement from the last inspection have been successful.

The proportion of pupils reaching a greater depth of learning has increased and is now at least in line with national averages by the end of key stages 1 and 2. Overall, pupils do well throughout their time at the school, reaching at least the standard expected for their age in writing, and often attaining well above this in reading and mathematics. All pupils, including the disadvantaged pupils, make above-average progress and attain similarly well.

Pupils understand how to make their work even better, which helps them to make good progress. Pupils benefit from the culture of care that is evident throughout the school. Above-average rates of attendance show how keen pupils are to come to school and to do their best.

Pupils are enthusiastic about their learning, describing how teachers help them to improve their work. They are happy and confident, interacting well with each other and the adults around them. They value how they are encouraged to respect others, regardless of their differences, and willingly take on responsibilities that contribute positively to the school community.

This supports pupils' personal development successfully. The vast majority of parents are highly positive about their children's experiences at the school. Respondents to Ofsted's Parent View questionnaire commented that they were 'consistently impressed by the quality of teaching and provision of care' that their children receive.

One captured this well when they said: 'My child is so happy at Saxon, progressing and developing not just educationally but as a whole person.' You remain committed to making the school the best that it can be. Therefore, your current work is rightly focused on improving standards in writing, so that they consistently match those currently attained in reading and mathematics.

The trust and local governing body work well together to monitor the school's work, holding leaders successfully to account for the impact of what they do. This ensures that pupils' welfare and success remain at the heart of everyone's work. Safeguarding is effective.

Leaders ensure that safeguarding arrangements are rigorous and meet pupils' needs successfully. A comprehensive and layered approach to training ensures that staff, leaders and governors understand their safeguarding duties well. Effective policies, systems and records support adults in carrying out this vital aspect of their work with vigilance and diligence.

These processes evolve appropriately as the school grows, to ensure that nothing important is missed. Leaders are rightly persistent in their work to secure extra help for the potentially vulnerable pupils who most need it, liaising tenaciously with the local authority and other experts. This gives parents confidence that staff act in their children's best interests to keep them safe.

Pupils benefit from useful opportunities that develop their self-awareness and risk management appropriately. Parents are encouraged to take an active part in this part of their children's learning, which promotes the culture of safeguarding that is evident within the school community. Pupils describe being confident about talking to adults regarding things they are concerned about, which helps leaders to identify and address potential worries.

For example, leaders have effectively adapted arrangements for lunchtime supervision after some pupils identified areas of the site where they felt less safe. During the inspection, pupils talked knowledgeably about how to keep themselves safe in an age-appropriate way, including when using the internet. Inspection findings ? During this inspection, we focused on: how well the teaching of reading, and particularly writing, enables boys and girls to make similarly good progress; why fixed-term exclusions have been above average and whether they are declining; and whether pupils learn as well across the broader curriculum as they currently do in reading, writing and mathematics.

I also reviewed the school's safeguarding arrangements. ? Leaders have prioritised improving writing to the standards already reached in reading and mathematics. Approaches to how writing is taught are appropriate and well established.

Pupils are supported well by the thoughtfully developed structures that help them to improve the fluency and accuracy of their writing, stimulated by the high-quality texts that their learning is linked to. This supports pupils' learning in reading as well as writing. For instance, one pupil told me how the books he reads in school help him to improve his writing, because he is introduced to new and interesting words that he then uses in his work.

• Boys are encouraged to develop a love of writing through regular opportunities that are seamlessly interwoven into the early years curriculum. As a result, the proportion of boys in the early years who are meeting the early learning goal in writing has improved notably over the past term. This is helping to ensure that boys and girls write equally well as they progress through the school.

Pupils' work shows that progress in writing across the school is now consistently good, and in some instances very good. This is helping to raise standards in writing towards matching those evident in reading and mathematics. ? For the past three years, the proportion of pupils being excluded from school for a fixed period has been above average.

Governors monitor the circumstances around these exclusions carefully, ensuring that they are appropriate and reasonable. In the meantime, leaders have given careful thought to the specific needs and challenges that put a small number of pupils at risk of exclusion, putting effective provision in place that meets their needs well. This work has led to significant improvements in pupils' behaviour, and the number of fixed-term exclusions has declined radically.

Some pupils whose behaviour was challenging in the past now manage themselves successfully, so that the risk of them being excluded from school has been very much reduced. ? Leaders are conscious that the high standards pupils reach in reading, writing and mathematics must not be to the detriment of pupils' learning across the other subjects in the curriculum. Consequently, leaders and teachers constantly reflect on and develop the wider curriculum, making the most of useful links between subjects and the texts that pupils read.

Staff work effectively together to develop what pupils learn, driven by a shared determination that it is relevant to the world and times that they live in. Their work to map out the wider curriculum to build knowledge, skills and understanding strategically over time is ongoing. ? Pupils learn enthusiastically across a suitably broad range of subjects, recalling useful facts about the topics they have studied.

They transfer their literacy and numeracy successfully into their wider learning, and similarly use their knowledge of other subjects to inspire their sustained writing. Their work shows clear evidence of their subject knowledge and skills developing over time. For example, Year 6 pupils talked to me about the art techniques they have learned that enabled them to produce high-quality clock designs.

Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: ? current improvements in how writing is taught lead to pupils attaining equally well in reading, writing and mathematics by the end of Year 6 ? curriculum content in the foundation subjects builds clearly and deliberately on pupils' knowledge, skills and understanding over time. I am copying this letter to the chair of the board of trustees and the chief executive officer or equivalent of the multi-academy trust, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children's services for Surrey. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website.

Yours sincerely Kathryn Moles Her Majesty's Inspector Information about the inspection We met to discuss a range of issues linked to standards in the school and safeguarding arrangements. Together, we visited classes across all year groups, observing learning, looking at books and talking to pupils about their work. I met with groups of leaders, staff, pupils and governors, and spoke with the school improvement adviser on the telephone.

I also met with representatives of the Lumen Learning multi-academy trust, of which the school is a member. I reviewed relevant policies and documents about pupils' attendance, academic achievement and welfare. Along with a group of leaders, I looked at a small sample of pupils' written work from across a number of year groups.

I considered survey responses from 56 pupils and 51 members of staff. I also took account of 102 responses to Ofsted's Parent View online questionnaire, including 102 written comments. In addition, I spoke with a small number of parents on the playground at the start of the day, and considered a letter received from two parents.