Outstanding schools: Tennyson Road Primary

Staff at Tennyson Road Primary are determined to ensure that all of their children leave school ready for the demands of secondary education. Succeeding in that aim has meant developing an eye for every detail, as Jacob Stowdiscovered...

Children at Tennyson Road Primary School are good at tests. In fact, ‘good’ doesn’t really cover it. They’re veritable examination board-confounding machines. In 2012 they breezed through their SATS, 100 per cent of the Year 6 cohort achieving at least Level 4 in reading, writing and mathematics.

Those are results any school would be proud of, but Tennyson Road’s achievement is even more impressive when you take into account the high numbers of children speaking English as an additional language and/or supported through the pupil premium and at school action plus who fall within its catchment. Step inside and you almost expect to see them all arranged in orderly rows, a canewielding Victorian school master enforcing rote learning in silence; but on the Wednesday TP pays a visit there’s no denying the youthful exuberance on show.

This year’s Key Stage 2 have decamped to the hall and split into groups for a week-long project about money, drums are being banged and recorders blown, and there are regular comings and goings between the in- and outdoors. Which leaves the question, how are headteacher, Hilary Power, her deputy, Jo Quince, and their staff team managing it?

“People ask me, ‘How do you get those results?’,” Hilary answers. “Well, you’ll have to go through everything in the school because I couldn’t point to a single factor – we put so much in, and everything plays a part. The most important thing,” she stresses, “is that we won’t let a child fail here – there won’t be an opportunity to slip through the net because that can’t happen.”

It may be impossible to pick out a single reason for the impressive progress and outcomes the school is delivering, but identifying a handful of the most significant contributors is less problematic. “We have a very holistic approach,” Hilary tells us, and the details that emerge over the course of our conversation – among them the school’s belief that addressing the emotional wellbeing of students is as important as identifying when an individual is struggling with their understanding of long division, and doing something about it – certainly backs that up…

1 Keeping track

“I didn’t come into a school that was in a difficult situation,” Hilary says, “but there was lots to be done.” Judging by the glowing ‘outstanding’ Tennyson Road received following its inspection in May, a lot has been done – and much of that centres on the school’s attitude towards, and use of, data. In keeping with Ofsted’s renewed focus on data, tracking the progress of each and every student in the school and analysing the trends that emerge is a key element of Hilary’s approach – one that ensures that no difficulties go unnoticed and appropriate interventions can quickly be put into place.

“I remember asking for the data when I first arrived,” Hilary continues, “and it was four or five sheets of A4. I thought, ‘Goodness, is this it?’ We now have data on all groups within the school. We track children half termly at pupil progress meetings, and interventions are set straight away for those who aren’t on track.”

“Our assessment coordinator has files and files of analysis,” agrees deputy, Jo. “We have indepth tracking for every group – boys, girls, free school meals, EAL, vulnerable pupils, the lot – which we use to set our interventions. We then have children who haven’t made enough progress in a half term going out to work in small groups, booster classes – and that’s why we get good results.”

With Tennyson Road’s diverse and challenging intake, data – and the grasp of the minutiae it offers – is particularly important. “We have very high mobility and we don’t want to miss any children – things can change very quickly in a term,” teacher and aforementioned assessment coordinator, Nicola Lloyd-Jones, explains as she takes us through how her system flags up areas of concern. “At the schools I’ve been to where data tracking hasn’t been as good, the staff just haven’t been as interested in small numbers as we are.”

2 Positive assessment

The accuracy of any conclusion drawn from data analysis, and thus the likely efficacy of any interventions planned as a result, is of course dependent on the quality of the data collected in the first place.

As such, at Tennyson Road a great deal of thought has also gone into assessment.

“Our data is gathered in different ways,” Jo tells us.

“Firstly, we use a lot of Rising Stars materials [Tennyson Road is a Rising Stars partner school], which have generated end of unit maths and literacy tests. We feel that if children are going to do a SATs test at the end of Year 6 – and because they’ll be doing tests throughout secondary school – they need to practice under test conditions.

“But we know, too,” she adds, “that not all children like tests and some won’t perform to their best in those circumstances – so our teachers need to look at and assess their work over time.” One way in which the latter is being accomplished successfully is through the use of Effective Marking – a stickerbased system developed at Woodbury Down Community Primary School, designed to enable teachers to assess each child’s progress, extend his or her learning in an engaging way and simultaneously reduce their own workload. “Let’s say the children are doing a lesson where they’re solving problems with money,” Jo says. “At the end of the lesson the teacher will mark with three stages of stickers. The first will be, ‘Fantastic, you can solve problems involving money.

Brilliant work.’ The second will be, ‘Good, you are learning to solve problems involving money.’ And the third stage is a target – ‘Keep on learning.’ There might also be a little comment included, for example, ‘I see that when you’ve taken away you haven’t always put the largest number at the top’, or something like that.

“The teacher then adds a ‘green pen question’: these are chosen according to how well each child has done, and the children write a response in green pen.”

It’s a system that seems to be popular with staff: “It’s very effective, and the children like it too,” Year 2 teacher, Tracey Friel, tells us. “It gives them a chance to reflect on what they’ve learnt and what the next steps should be in their learning, and encourages them to learn from their own mistakes.”

“And because it takes less time, you can put more time into your assessment,” Year 4 teacher, David Seeley, adds, “which improves the following lesson because you’ve had more time to think about it.”

3 Emotional support

Part of Tennyson Road’s holistic approach to ensuring children’s success is a recognition that emotional wellbeing can play a critical role in children’s outcomes – and when, therefore, problems occur, appropriate interventions are required. The school has four members of staff dedicated to pupil wellbeing – from a TA with a speciality in developing good behaviour and social skills, and a family worker (originally funded via the Sure Start project) and assistant, who help bridge the gap between school and home, to a trained counsellor, who is currently on onsite for two hours each day.

“She supports children who are struggling emotionally,” Hilary says of the latter. “She talks to them after lunch if they’ve had a particularly bad lunchtime, or if they’re not managing situations. That’s helped tremendously. On top of that, as well as working with the children and their parents, our family worker attends pupil progress meetings – some children might be on the child protection register, or the family worker might be working with their parents if they are struggling, so if these factors come up we can check them straight away and find out if we need to spend more time with a particular child. We’ve tried to put into place everything we feel the children need.”

“We also have a strong antibullying policy,” Jo adds, “and we do pupil questionnaires three times a year, which I then follow up. Children are happy here.”

4 Money well spent

An above average 26 per cent of Tennyson Road’s children receive free school meals, and thus qualify for additional funding under the Pupil Premium – a resource Hilary and her team are focused on making the most of. “Pupil Premium can be quite a worry for headteachers – you’re suddenly given this money that you’re accountable for and must use efficiently for your children,” Hilary admits. “We track our FSM children separately, as well as part of the class, because we knew it would be something Ofsted would want to look at.

“But it has certainly improved what we can do – we’re able to go over and above for FSM children. Not necessarily in an educational sense but in terms of enabling them to do things they might not otherwise get to do. So we might send them horse riding, pay for them to learn a musical instrument, buy them their uniform or pay for their residential trips.

“Obviously some of the money is spent on interventions,” she continues, “and I have specific people working with these children. This year, for the first time, we’ve used the money to fund interventions in Year 1 and Year 2. We’re stretching out as we learn more ourselves about where the need is and how we can change things.

“But we do what we think our children need,” she concludes. “For instance, in the Sutton Trust report on the Pupil Premium, teaching assistants are extremely low down on the list of what works, but actually, our teaching assistants are really effective. I don’t agree with research that says they don’t make any difference – we’ve done a lot of training with them here.”

5 Sharing practice

With Tennyson Road expanding from one-form to three-form entry from the beginning of the next academic year – a move which will see a second site opened down the road to accommodate the increased numbers – more children will soon be benefiting from the school’s ‘outstanding’ teaching. However, Hilary and her team have already been sharing their practice with schools in the area for some time.

“I am a Local Leader of Education and we have connections with two Teaching Schools at the moment, which deploy us,” Hilary explains. “We work with schools for all sorts of reasons – they might be in need of improvement, or they could have just taken on a new head. All of our KS2 teachers have been over to one school we’re working with, and their staff have come back here to watch lessons.

“It’s working really well and it has helped everyone involved, including our staff – their confidence has been boosted as they now know that they’re good at what they do. You somehow never feel as though you’re ‘good’ as a teacher – you’re always striving to get better and better and better; but the fact our staff are able to share their skills with those watching them, and get a very positive response, has given them more self-belief, I think.”