Ofsted and Diocese reports

Ofsted

The school was visited by Ofsted in December 2012 and the inspectors found the school to be ‘good’.

Here is a link to the full report:

Ashton Oftsed report December 2012

The key strengths were:

• The school has made good progress since the last inspection and pupils achieve well because of good teaching and good leadership and management.  Levels of attainment have improved.
• The staff work well together under the headteacher’s leadership and provide a curriculum which gives pupils a wide range of experiences.
• Different events in the school calendar which link the school to the community, including the church, help develop pupils’ confidence and social skills.  Assemblies are thoughtfully presented and help pupils’ spiritual, cultural and moral development.
• The quality of teaching is managed well.  Governors, too, have a good idea of teaching quality through their visits.
• Pupils behave well and have a mature understanding of how to treat others.  They have a good knowledge of personal safety.
• The pupils get along well together.  The school is ‘a happy family’.  Pupils know each other very well.
• Staff take very good care of the pupils.  Parents are pleased that their children attend the school and speak highly of it.

Areas to improve were highlighted as:

• Some activities for children in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) need further development so that the experiences challenge the children’s thinking more.
• Subject leaders need to be more systematic in planning and undertaking reviews of subjects for which they are responsible.
• Pupils need to be given more opportunities to practise and develop their writing skills in subjects other than English.

As a school we have continued to work hard towards these priorities, which have been areas of focus on our school development plan.  These are some of the ways in which we have addressed the areas to improve:

There are now two teachers in the Key Stage 1 class for two mornings a week, in order that children in the EYFS can have more focused teacher time each week.  We have looked at new ways of planning the curriculum for the EYFS and have invested greatly in resourcing the outside area and resources for the classroom.  We have purchased a new online recording and assessing tool called Tapestry to enable us to consistently gather evidence for the EYFS.

There is now in place a system for monitoring subjects across the school, and all subject leaders have the opportunity to complete monitoring across a rolling programme.  Links with other subject leaders in cluster schools have been established and are developing.

Writing has been a real priority for the past two years.  We have encouraged and developed writing across the curriculum, and have held different writing days to encourage writing for a purpose.  The school website has recently been completely overhauled and now provides pupils with the opportunity to publish written articles to their own pupil blog.  Having their name “in lights” on the school homepage is a real source of motivation to write, and to write regularly.

Diocese

Ashton also has a SIAMS inspection (Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools) every five years.  This is because we are a Church of England, ‘Voluntary Controlled School’ and part of the Peterborough Diocese.

Our last inspection was in December 2014.  The school was graded as 'good'.

Here is a link to the full report:

Ashton SIAMS report December 2014

The key strengths were:

• Leadership and management has a very good Christian vision fully supported by the whole community and provides strong capacity for driving improvement.
• The Christian values and the respect shown by all members of the school for one another lead to an outstanding ethos and learners’ very good attitudes and behaviour.
• The impact of collective worship is good, and supports pupils understanding of the Christian faith.
• Learner’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development (SMSC) is good because of the wide range of experiences pupils enjoy through effective teaching and learning.

Areas to improve were highlighted as:

• Extend the opportunities for pupils to plan and lead collective worship and improve the strategies, to include the pupils, for monitoring and evaluating the impact of collective worship.
• Improve the overall targets in the school development plan, including those for religious education (RE) and collective worship, so that they can be easily evaluated to show the impact of the proposed developments.