Our Services and Products

Solutions for the Hillside Avenue Primary and Nursery School

1st March, 2016

Hillside Avenue Primary and Nursery school faced being judged ‘inadequate’ at its next Ofsted inspection, based on a joint audit from two Mathematics and English advisers.

A large two-form primary school situated in Thorpe St Andrew, Hillside Avenue Primary and Nursery school has approximately 460 pupils on roll, in 16 classes (including 2 Nursery classes) and 21 teaching staff. While the school received a ‘good’ judgement from Ofsted in 2009, by Autumn 2012 it was likely that the school would be judged ‘inadequate’ at the next Ofsted inspection based on a joint audit from two Mathematics and English advisers.

This was due to a number of factors, including turbulent staffing, a weak cohort, and major changes in the Ofsted inspection framework.

Some of the main issues were:

• Data for both attainment and achievement was not as good as it should be.
• The school was disjointed, operating as three separate key stages as opposed to one unified school.
• The quality of the learning environment, both inside and outside the classroom was poor.
• There were weak systems in place for monitoring, and assessing the impact of actions.
• There was no cohesive whole school plan of improvement. Subject leaders and Key Stage leaders operated in isolation.

What did we do?

• Commissioned support, every half term since Autumn 2012, from a Mathematics and English adviser who would critique, review and recommend actions. Joint monitoring with the Mathematics adviser and subject leader, and English adviser and subject leader, meant outcomes could triangulated across both subjects and subject priorities agreed.
• Developed a cohesive SIDP focussing on English and Mathematics priorities, resulting in School Leadership Meetings that concentrate on reviewing progress towards shared goals.
• Improved the school-learning environment – classrooms and corridors – now considered an important element of the children’s learning.
• Introduced enquiry based learning, which is now a key approach to the teaching of subjects other than English and Mathematics. Each term begins with a whole school enquiry project, which provides cross curricular English and Mathematics opportunities.

• Targeted CPD depending on the most urgent need for either English or Mathematics.
• Improved attendance at the English and Mathematics networks, as well as at many other training courses.
• Empowered subject leaders to adopt CPD in school, following advice and support from subject specific advisers.

Current profile

The data picture has significantly improved since 2012.

In April 2015 Ofsted judged the school as ‘good’.