Balfour Primary School, in Brighton has achieved the Inclusion Quality Mark’s Inclusive School Award.
Strategic Planning Informs Improvement
In November 2017 the school was judged by Ofsted as ‘Requires Improvement (RI)’, dropping from a previously ‘Good’ judgement. It was given RI again in February 2020. Since then, the school has been on an incredible journey of improvement. Ably guided, initially, by the two Deputy Headteachers, acting up as Co-Headteachers, and now with the current Headteacher in post, the school has gone from strength to strength. Whilst the school is still in the RI category, the March 2021 monitoring visit highlighted that the school was right to be very proud of the quality of its home learning offer. One parent described it as a ‘dramatic shift in the quality of online learning’ ahead of the then lockdown. The school achieved this by drawing on up-to-date research about effective remote education and taking account of the views of parents, staff, and pupils.
Clear Vision For Continued Improvement
The June 2021 monitoring visit recognised the work the SLT had continued to put into focussing on improving the school, despite the pandemic, and was particularly impressed with the clear vision of the education Balfour wants for its pupils. In the same visit, inspectors picked up on the lack of a systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme, meaning that pupils phonic knowledge was not progressing as it should, and the weakest readers were not being given the right form of support. The school responded quickly to this finding and have since adopted Read Write Inc (RWI) as their SSP. The whole school has embraced this programme, and extensive training for all staff has been delivered, so that it is now being taught with fidelity.
Reflective Practice
Balfour now feels it has been on a long, incremental journey of development. One of the reasons that it has applied for the Inclusion Quality Mark (IQM) is because it wanted to use the eight elements in the evaluation document as a reflection tool and a framework against which it can benchmark the school improvement journey it is on. The IQM evaluation tool has been a guide to the school’s thinking and development in all areas of school life. In addition, Balfour hoped that by achieving the Inclusive School Award, this would be recognition of the many initiatives and changes that have been put in place over the last two to three years.
Quality Teaching and Learning
Since the start of the current Headteacher’s tenure, the focus areas of improvement have been clear: SEND practice across the school, Quality First Teaching (QFT), the development of the curriculum, the stripping down of interventions to ensure they were purposeful and impactful and building the capacity of the Executive Intervention Co-ordinator (EIC). A SENCO Assistant has been employed to allow the EIC to have the capacity to coach and team teach with colleagues in class, enabling SEND to be a central focus of QFT. The 2022 SATs results bear testament to the quality of teaching and learning within the school, with writing and maths both exceeding the national average and reading significantly exceeding the national average. At the time of the assessors visit, the greater depth and combined results were not yet available.
Removing Barriers
The school had struggled to join up its thinking in relation to the needs of individuals; an issue that was picked up in the 2017 Ofsted report. However, the school is confident that it now has better ways of working regarding tracking pupil progress and creating an individualised approach to learning for each child. The school has regular progress meetings for every child, involving a cross-section of staff. Progress meetings consist of a diagnostic drilling down into the barriers to learning, be they academic or pastoral, and tailor making the best challenge and provision for each child. This is then translated into classroom practice and robustly monitored and evaluated, where the expectation is to see children having access to challenge after the main task or within it.
Dynamic Curriculum
Subject Leaders have real ownership over their curriculum areas of responsibility, carrying out a range of monitoring methods and planning with year groups and class teachers. Most invaluably, they have been given time to have the capacity to make an impact on their subjects. Governors, too, have played a significant role in supporting and challenging the school to get to where it is today.
Find out more about the IQM Inclusive School Award
If your school is interested in obtaining the IQM Inclusive School Award or you wish to talk to a member of the IQM team please telephone:
028 7127 7857 (9.00 am to 5.00 pm)
or email: [email protected] for further details.
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