Wilton Primary Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Short inspection of Wilton Primary School

Following my visit to the school on 8 February 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 January 2013. This school continues to be good. The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection.

Despite the challenges you face, your indomitable focus on improvement has enabled you to provide direction and a pathway for all staff. The close working partnership between you and the senior teacher ensures that leadership within the sch...ool is consistently good, even when you are supporting other schools within the trust. You know your school and its pupils well.

Your ability to recall each child and the progress they are currently making reflects this. Your evaluation of the school's performance is accurate and the improvement plan you, the senior teacher and the governors have put in place demonstrates your ambitious vision for the future. Individual improvement targets set for teachers reflect this vision well.

Your shrewd and astute observations combined with the strong mentoring skills of the senior teacher have ensured improvement in the quality of teaching, learning and assessment since the last inspection. Your introduction of a whole-school focus on mathematics in response to an area for improvement identified in the previous inspection report has increased teachers' confidence and skills and has improved pupils' attainment in mathematics overall. While progress in reading also remains strong in most areas of the school, pupils' progress in writing is not yet as good as it should be.

You have already taken steps to bring about improvement. For example, extra training for staff on how to develop a greater depth in pupils' writing has already led to a boost to the quality of writing seen in pupils' books. The effective and thorough approach you take to monitoring and checking pupils' progress enables you to identify those who make slower progress and are in danger of being left behind.

You and the senior teacher ensure that swift action is taken to put in place support for these pupils, and many make good and better progress. The challenges you face as a small school include an often transitory population with much fewer than the average number of pupils starting school in the early years and staying until the end of Year 6. Your positive attitude ensures that all pupils are welcomed.

Your very high expectations for both behaviour and achievement ensure pupils make good progress during their time in school. Your astute use of sport premium funding enables pupils to participate in a wide variety of sports. Parents spoken to during the inspection and those that responded to Ofsted's online survey, Parent View, expressed very positive attitudes about school staff and leaders.

Comments such as 'This is a brilliant little school that really takes care of every pupil', and 'My child just loves coming to school' reflected the views of many others. Safeguarding is effective. Pupils who attend the school say they feel very safe.

When asked about incidents of bullying they replied: 'There is not much real bullying happens here. Sometimes we have fall outs, but that's just life.' A recent afternoon session focused on improving pupils' understanding of how to stay safe on the internet has increased pupils' vigilance and developed their knowledge of how to keep safe online.

A higher than average number of vulnerable pupils attend the school. You, as the designated lead in safeguarding, frequently work closely with other professionals to support these pupils and their families. The recording of information in safeguarding files is clear, concise and in chronological order.

This high standard is maintained in entries made by staff on the school's online system for the recording of behaviour and safeguarding incidents. All staff in school complete regular safeguarding training. You and the lead teacher receive termly training and regular updates to your enhanced training.

This continuing professional development ensures you and your staff team are aware of current issues and have a good level of understanding of the needs of pupils and their families in the local area. Inspection findings ? The small number of children who join the early years unit often arrive with knowledge and skills lower than might be expected for their age. Nursery and Reception children are taught together in one class; however, planned learning is closely tailored to their individual needs.

This ensures that they make good progress from their starting points, particularly in developing early numeracy and reading skills. ? The newly appointed early years teacher has made good gains in improving the provision, particularly inside the classroom. However, she is aware that more work is needed to increase provision for developing pupils' writing skills and the outside area.

While plans are in place to make these improvements they have not yet been carried out and as a result children make slightly slower progress in writing than in reading and mathematics. ? Last year progress dipped for pupils in key stage 1, particularly in writing for boys and disadvantaged pupils. Current data shows that this trend has been reversed recently and progress has improved for pupils in Years 1 and 2.

However, school leaders are aware that more work needs to be done to improve the standard of pupils' writing across the school. ? The school has a larger proportion of disadvantaged pupils than the national average. Current school data shows that progress for this group is equal to or better than that for other groups nationally.

• A further challenge faced by school leaders is the higher than average level of pupils' mobility within school. Last term 11 pupils left the school and a further six joined. This is a significant change in a population of just 66 pupils.

Sometimes pupils go missing from education and the school is not always informed where they have moved to. When this happens staff work extremely hard to locate families, and their vigilance pays off on many occasions. This, coupled with unauthorised absence due to holidays taken in term time, has an impact on attendance levels within school.

• Attendance levels overall are improving, particularly for disadvantaged pupils, largely because of the diligent approach of staff and school leaders in investigating the absence of every pupil. ? All school staff recognise the important role they play in safeguarding pupils. Risks to pupils are carefully assessed and actions to minimise the level of risk are recorded and are diligently carried out.

Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: ? current strategies in place to improve the quality of pupils' writing continue and are closely monitored in order to evaluate their success ? plans in place to improve provision in the outdoor area of the early years unit are implemented as soon as possible. I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children's services for Redcar and Cleveland. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website.

Yours sincerely Marian Thomas Her Majesty's Inspector Information about the inspection During the inspection I held meetings with senior leaders and staff. I met informally with parents at the beginning of the school day and spoke with pupils both inside and outside classrooms. I scrutinised a range of documents including the school's safeguarding documents, behaviour and attendance files and the school's system for measuring pupils' progress.

I observed pupils' learning in all classes, accompanied by senior leaders, and analysed work in books across the school. I also met with the chair of the governing body, a representative from the Aspire Learning Partnership Trust and the director of education for Redcar and Cleveland. I also took into account the views of 16 parents who filled in the online questionnaire, Parent View.