Contact: John Clarke, Deputy Director of Children's Services, Tel 01962 846459 [email protected] or

Richard Mitchell, Strategic School Improvement Manager, Tel 023 92 441471 [email protected]

1 Summary

1.1 The school was inspected by Ofsted during the week beginning 7 March 2005 and was found by the inspection team to have serious weaknesses. The details of the findings were presented at the meeting of the schools' monitoring panel on 21 June 2005.

1.2 The local authority (LA) was aware that there were weaknesses in the school and has been actively working with the headteacher (since April 2003), deputy headteacher and assistant headteacher (since September 2004) to address the issues identified.

1.3 The LA and school responded quickly and robustly to the judgement, and the Governors' Action Plan and LA Statement of Action clearly identified actions which would be taken in order to overcome the serious weaknesses identified.

1.4 The school was inspected by HMI on 1 and 2 November 2005. The report judged the school to be making `satisfactory' progress in the removal of the causes of the serious weaknesses.

1.5 This report to the Panel supports Aim 1 of the Corporate Strategy (maximising life opportunities) and the achievement of the 5 outcomes of the Children Act 2004. The quality of schools is clearly closely related to the educational achievement of pupils, and those educational achievements fundamentally affect each person's life chances. The purpose of this report is to inform Elected Members of the work being done to effect improvement in the school.

2 Background

2.1 Jean Filtness is headteacher of the school, which has 21.7% of its population entitled to free school meals. The number on roll is 166. The percentage of pupils identified as having special educational needs (SEN) and receiving additional support in the form of School Action or School Action Plus is 28.9%.

3 Progress since the last report

3.1 A Strategy Group consisting of the School Improvement Manager (SIM), attached inspector (AI), headteacher and chair of governors, and representatives from Governor Services, Education Personnel and Education Finance continues to meet half-termly. The headteacher continues to produce detailed reports for these meetings on the progress the school is making. The next group meeting is scheduled for 24 May 2006.

3.2 The AI continues to make regular visits to the school as part of its participation in the Intensifying Support Programme (ISP), and has been liaising closely with consultants for English, Mathematics and Behaviour and Attendance, who are supporting the school as dictated by the Action Plan.

3.3 The SIM continues to undertake half-termly monitoring visit where she looks for a clear identification of improvements which can be supported by high quality evidence.

3.4 The Headteacher and Leadership Team should be praised for the efforts they are continuing to make to ensure that the necessary improvements in the school are sustained, and for the work they are doing to provide the appropriate evidence for the improvement of the school.

3.5 Each of the three Key Issues continue to be closely monitored by the SIM.

Key Issues 1:

Improve the Quality of Teaching (particularly the removal of
inconsistencies) in order that all children are challenged appropriately

· The quality of teaching is steadily improving and is in many places regularly `good' or `very good'. The school has developed an effective Teaching and Learning Policy which includes support materials which help teachers identify the specific areas of their own practice, as teachers, that might be further improved. All staff now have a shared understanding of this document and, therefore, the common elements that identify a lesson as `outstanding' or `good', for example.

· Recent development work on Assessment for Learning is having a positive impact on the school and the quality of standards the children are achieving.

· Peer monitoring has begun within the school, giving teachers an opportunity to watch colleagues teach and thereby learn from each other. This too has been received very positively by staff.

· Monitoring of teaching quality has also been undertaken by the headteacher and key senior staff. No unsatisfactory teaching was observed and the progress in teachers' understanding and application of assessment for learning was clearly evident.

Key Issues 2:

Implement and fine-tune the new curriculum and planning structure for work in different subjects

· The curriculum planning is now more effective in taking account of children of differing abilities. The plans are monitored regularly by the headteacher but also increasingly by the subject leaders. This supports the judgement that leadership is now more appropriately distributed across the school.

· Subject leaders are now more experienced in their roles and are beginning to take on a more pro-active perspective on monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of their own subject area.

· The progress in this key issues continues to be satisfactory.

Key Issues 3:

To improve standards in English and Maths and Science

· The indications are that the progress of the previously identified initiatives are enabling standards to rise slowly. Account must be taken of the fact that, because Mengham is a completely inclusive school, the percentage of children joining the school with identified special educational needs (SEN) is increasing. The Education of Other Than At School (EOTAS) team are aware of the issues here and have met both with the headteacher and the SIM. A resolution with the other local schools as to how best to provide for children with SEN on Hayling Island is to be sought and will be reported on at the next meeting.

· Although the recent indicators would suggest that standards continue to rise, the SATs tests currently being undertaken by the pupils at the school will give us the most up to date indicators of continued improvement. This data will be presented at the next meeting.

4 Future actions

4.1 The support for the school will continue exactly as stated within the LA Statement of Action and the Governors' Action Plan. These plans have been followed closely by the subject consultants for Maths and English, and the AI, and rigorously monitored by the SIM. This will continue in the Summer Term 2006, where rapid progress is anticipated.

5 Legal implications

5.1 None

6 Financial implications

6.1 None

7 Personnel implications

7.1 None

8 Impact assessment

8.1 Race and equality impact assessment has been considered in the development of this report and no adverse impact have been identified.

9 Crime Prevention issues

9.1 None

10 Views of the Local County Councillor

10.1 The local County Councillor has been informed of the outcome of this inspection but views were not sought in the drafting of this report.

Recommendation

1 That this report be noted.

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background documents

The following documents discuss facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and have been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB: the list excludes

1. Published works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act

None