MONITORING VISIT REPORT

School / Brooke Special School
Date / 5th May 2017
Reviewer / Paul Roberts former NLE
Focus of the review /
  • Commissioned by Warwickshire LA to inform monitoring and support for maintained special schools in the authority with a focus on assessment and outcomes

Activities /
  • A meeting with the head teacher and 3 deputy head teachers on assessment and outcomes
  • Threepaired observations of lessons in classes in year 1, year 14 and in a mixed age Nurture Group. These included a focus on the link between assessment and teaching and learning for one pupil in each class who had been selected during our meeting. One of these pupils was exceeding their progress target, another was on track to meet theirs and the third was making less progress than predicted.I did not have time to observe a large enough sample of lessons to make an evaluation of the overall quality of teaching and learning.

Findings
Strengths identified /
  • Senior leaders evaluate the overall progress of pupils across the school as good and that for it to become outstanding they need to embed consistently high standards of practice in teaching, learning and assessment across a staff team that has grown considerably in recent years.
  • The school’s self-evaluation, summary progress information over the last four years and the limited sample of teaching, learning and pupils’ work indicated that senior leaders have an accurate understanding of pupil progress and they were able to articulate this clearly.
  • In the lessons in year 1 and year 14 senior leaders made accurate assessments of the strengths and development points that they observed. In the Nurture group snack time pupils were engaged in social and emotional aspects of learning and it was more difficult to assess teaching and learning.
  • The school curriculum places a high value on interactive learning linked to pupils’ interests and skills for adult life. This was apparent in the lessons observed and inthe way the school supports pupilsand their families in finding appropriate destinations when and after they leave. This enables the school to prepare pupils well for the next stage in their lives or education.
  • Senior leaders carefully track pupil progress by drawing together evidence from learning walks, the “Solar” assessment tool, work scrutiny and weekly conversations between deputies or senior teachers and class teachers. This enables them to identify where pupils require focused interventions in a timely way.
  • Two teachers are timetabled to support pupil interventions that arise from progress monitoring and use team teaching or modelling to grow the capacity of class teachers to implement them. Senior leaders reported that this had led to accelerated progress in both the primary and secondary phases.
  • The school engages in structured external moderation with other special schools and where possible mainstream schools and showed me an example of this. These sessions involve moderating the levels of pieces of work and are also beginning to compare how schools set short and long term learning targets. This allows the school to make assessment decisions in line with other schools and ensure that targets for pupils are appropriately challenging.
  • The school has an internal system of moderation involving senior and class teachers to support the accuracy of assessment decisions.
  • Senior leaders have a good knowledge of relative progress among groups of pupils by age, type of need and disadvantage. For example they identified that a group of pupils who have Downs syndrome and who are working at P-levels whose progress was being limited by their communication needs and planned an intervention that has narrowed this gap.
  • There is no gap between the achievement of pupils who do or do not qualify for the Pupil Premium so the school has targeted this funding on barriers to pupils’ learning. The impact of this for previous academic years has been evidenced.
  • The school website meets nearly all of the DFE requirements and the school is commendably open in the way it uses it to share a range of information to support its self-evaluation. The use of film featuring staff and pupils explaining the school ethos and their roles is accessible and engaging(see website report attached)

Areas for further development /
  • The standard of annotation of pupils’work was inconsistent and senior leaders agreed that this represented the situation across the school.
  • The self-evaluation information and SEF form on the school website are too detailed and complex to be readily accessible to governors, staff and anyone monitoring the school.

Next steps in areas for further development /
  • Establish a consistent standard of annotation or testimony of pupils’ work to include date, learning objective, learning outcome, level of help and staff initials. This will provide accurate evidence on which to base moderation and assessment decisions.
  • Moderate pupils’ annotated work at a class team level as often as possible, (ideally weekly). This will help staff to understand the value of accurate annotation, focus all staff on pupils’ learning and raise awareness of teaching assistants of pupils’ learning targets and achievements.
  • Write a SEF focused on the school’s current self-evaluation and ask for feedback on how accessible audiences such as governors and senior teachers find it and what it tells them about the school’s strengths and development areas.
  • Publish only concise information on pupil progress at the level of key stage cohorts. (see website report attached). Together with a more focused SEF this will give key stakeholders the level of information that they need to contribute to setting priorities for school improvement.
  • Clearly reference the schools system or strategy to benchmark pupil progress e.g. National Progression Guidance for Key Stages 1-2 and 2-3, Caspa for Key Stage 3-4. This will enable anyone monitoring your pupil progress to compare it to that of pupils who have similar starting points.
  • Work with a small group of parents to edit theSchool Information Report to ensure that it provides the information that any parent would need about the school in a way that they can readily understand.
  • Include on the website: Your Pupil Premium and Catch-Up Premium strategies for 2016-17, a short written statement that encapsulates your distinctive school mission and values and an attendance policy that provides clear guidance to a prospective parent.

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