whitefield ofsted

Telephone: 01772 744449 Fax: 01772 750605 bursar@whitefield-pri.lancs.sch.uk Email: OFSTED INSPECTION - MARCH 2013 Dear parents and carers You’ll remember that our school was inspected by Ofsted on 20th and 21st March 2013, just before the Easter holiday.

Attached is a copy of the inspection report.

The governors and I are delighted to tell you the outcome of the inspection was GOOD. We are ‘a good school’!

I know those of you who have been with us for a number of years will have been through some of the changes that we have had at Whitefield. You may recall our previous inspection in March 2011 that judged us to be ‘satisfactory’ and how disappointed we all felt about that judgement. We have spent the last four years making our school great again, and we have finally got the recognition for that hard work from Ofsted.

As I did following the last inspection, I thought it would be useful to highlight some of the comments in the report that we are particularly proud of and also mention some of the things Ofsted said throughout the two days that didn’t appear in the report.

As always, we continue to strive to make our school even better for our children and we know we can become an outstanding school.

Thank you for your continued support – this result is down to every member of the Whitefield community; the children, the parents and carers, the staff, the governors and members of our local community. Well done everyone!

Yours sincerely

Sarah Foster Headteacher

Mike Walker Chair of Governors

Our children (your children!) were amazing as always during the inspection. The lead inspector commented on the children opening doors for them, saying hello and even asking them if they were having a good day!

Behaviour and safety – “good behaviour and relationships were observed in all lessons. Pupils work and play happily together.”

Reading was highlighted as a particular strength of the school. We have invested resources in new books, staff training and phonics development in the last two years, and this can be seen in the level of reading being achieved throughout school. The inspectors particularly enjoyed listening to readers in Year 1 and Year 2. “The teaching of reading is well organised. Pupils are well-equipped for future learning.”

Teaching “is good and some is outstanding. Pupils are fully involved and actively learning. Skilled teaching assistants provide good care and support for pupils.”

You will know from reading the weekly newsletters that our curriculum has changed and we are incorporating so many more opportunities for children to be active learners and lead their own learning. This was reflected in the report and in discussions with inspectors. They could see the huge developments we had made in our personalised curriculum and observed maths and English links in other lessons too.

Attainment and progress – this is an area we have focused on significantly in the last four years and we are delighted with the comments about the progress of all groups of pupils. “Pupils achieve well. Attainment is well above national expectations in English and mathematics. All groups of pupils make good progress from their starting points.”

Inspectors could see the accelerated progress being made by a large number of pupils through Key Stage 2 (Years 36).

Governance: We have such ‘visible’ governors with them regularly attending school events and working in the classrooms along side the children. The governing body was praised for its knowledge of the school, understanding what we do well and what we need to work on next.

Next steps: We now need to focus on raising the attainment of boys writing and improving our teaching so that we are consistently outstanding. We are really pleased with what the inspectors highlighted as our next steps, as we had already identified these areas on our school improvement plan. We have been working on both within school.