Templenewsam Halton Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Short inspection of Templenewsam Halton Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 2 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 your school was judged to be good in March 2012. This school continues to be good.

The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You have worked very effectively to establish and maintain a culture at the school where cooperation and openness, high expectations and high-quality learning are practised and celebrated. Your school is characterised by the happiness and e...agerness with which pupils and staff engage with each other and their learning.

You know your community, your staff and your pupils very well and you use this knowledge to drive continued improvement. Pupils enjoy school. They thrive on the challenging teaching and care that they receive.

The 'formal' curriculum is supported by a very wide range of extra-curricular activities, including music, which many pupils take up. For example, I attended a lunchtime rehearsal of your school orchestra. A large group of pupils were playing a wide range of instruments in jazz arrangements of popular tunes.

It is the first time during any inspection I have heard a group of pupils shouting, appropriately and in time, 'Tequila!' Your previous inspection in March 2012 identified the need to develop further the roles of leadership across the school. This particularly related to the way leaders monitored the impact of the work of their areas of responsibility. You and your governors have addressed this very successfully.

You and your leaders monitor the work of the school very expertly. Your team of leaders are knowledgeable and skilled in the way they undertake their work. You use your monitoring to refocus and successfully target teaching and other activities to ensure that pupils make the progress that they should.

Your governors' work in overseeing and checking this is exemplary. You have dealt very adeptly with some challenging staffing issues. Carefully and effectively supported by your team and by governors, you have put in place strategies that have ensured that any disruption to pupils' learning is minimised.

You are ambitious for your school and set yourself the highest of standards. You are determined to improve further the quality of teaching across the school and you know that there is still more to be done. Safeguarding is effective.

The leadership team has ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and records are detailed and of high quality. You have created and maintain a strong and pervasive culture of safeguarding at the school. You, all the staff at the school and the governing body take your safeguarding responsibilities very seriously.

You ensure that there is regular and effective training for all staff and governors to ensure that they are up to date in their knowledge and understanding of safeguarding. You, as the designated safeguarding lead, have strong and effective links with the relevant outside agencies. You record your dealings with these agencies in a detailed and meticulous manner.

You follow safeguarding issues through effectively and engage with the local authority promptly. Inspection findings ? I looked at the effectiveness of the early years provision as one of the lines of enquiry for this inspection to see whether children got off to a flying start at school. ? Children settle quickly into the Nursery and the Reception class because of the careful transition arrangements put in place by the early years leader and her team.

Staff in the early years have a clear understanding of the range of children's needs as they enter the school. This means that staff already know a lot about the children before they arrive. As a result, plans for each child's learning are well developed.

In addition, the school runs regular information events for parents before and after their children enter the school. Children are happy, safe and soon grow to understand and welcome the routines established by the school. The environment is bright and engaging both inside and out.

Children play and learn well together, developing their skills as enquiring and collaborative learners. ? The early years leader deploys her staff carefully. Children's progress is monitored and recorded carefully and used to focus next steps in learning.

Parents are very complimentary about the regularity and depth of the information they receive about their children's progress. Nursery nurses and teaching assistants are skilled and well trained. They play a key role in monitoring children's progress and welfare.

• I also looked at the breadth and depth of the curriculum and the quality of the teaching of mathematics across the school because in the past outcomes in mathematics have not been as good as those for other subjects. In connection with these things, I also looked at the ways in which the schools in the Templenewsam Learning Partnership support your work in mathematics and more generally across the school. ? You have very effectively addressed the comparatively weaker performance in mathematics.

You have used careful analysis of last year's key stage 2 test results to identify the areas of mathematics that needed addressing. You and the leader for mathematics, drawing on support from the partnership, then worked carefully with the whole staff to develop and deepen further their skills and knowledge in mathematics. As a result, teaching in this subject is now very effective.

Inspection evidence supports this. All staff have benefited from this approach. There are more opportunities for pupils to deepen their knowledge and skills.

This helps all pupils, including the most able and those who are disadvantaged, to make better and more assured progress. Pupils have noticed and welcomed this change in emphasis to more 'open-ended' problem solving. As one pupil told me, 'Maths is really challenging now.

Really hard. It's great!' ? You continue to monitor the impact of teaching very carefully. You are aware that there is still some work to be done to ensure that the improvements that you and your team have put in place are embedded and pupils' success in mathematics is sustained.

• Another area I looked at was the apparently poorer attendance of disadvantaged pupils during last year. Again, you and your team have addressed this very effectively. Attendance for disadvantaged pupils is now very similar to that of their peers in the school and is above the national average.

This success is the result of your attendance team's impeccable systems, their extensive knowledge of your school's families and their dogged persistence. Driven by your own high expectations of attendance, your colleagues have used a wide range of strategies to support pupils and their families and to remove barriers to learning. Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: ? there continues to be a focus on pupils' success in mathematics so that outcomes for all pupils, including the most able and those who are disadvantaged, continue to show sustained improvement ? the attendance of disadvantaged pupils continues to be at least as good as that of their peers in the school and above the national average.

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 Mark Evans Her Majesty's Inspector Information about the inspection I visited all classes, most of them accompanied by you, to observe teaching, learning and assessment.

During these visits, where appropriate, I spoke with teachers and teaching assistants about their work. I also checked pupils' progress in their books, talked formally with a group of pupils from Year 5 and talked informally with pupils in lessons and around the school at lunch and breaktimes. I also watched a lunchtime rehearsal of the school orchestra and attended a whole-school assembly and singing practice.

I met with groups of parents at the beginning and end of the day. I met with you to discuss the school's effectiveness and what you have done to ensure the school continues to improve. I also met with the early years, mathematics and literacy leaders, three governors, including the chair and vice-chair of the governing body, and with the coordinator of the school's work to support pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities.

I met with an officer from Leeds local authority about the authority's view of the school. I read a range of documents, including your evaluation of the school's effectiveness. I also scrutinised the school's safeguarding systems, records and associated documents.

I checked information about pupils' achievement along with external evaluations of aspects of the school's work. I also read minutes of meetings of the governing body. I considered 77 responses to Ofsted's online questionnaire (Parent View), 73 free text comments and a letter from a parent, 30 responses from staff and 60 responses from pupils to the online questionnaires.