Alva Primary School and
Nursery Class
Clackmannanshire Council
25 August 2009
This report tells you about the quality of education at the school1.
We describe how children benefit from learning there. We
explain how well they are doing and how good the school is at
helping them to learn. Then we look at the ways in which the
school does this. We describe how well the school works with
other groups in the community, including parents2 and services
which support children. We also comment on how well staff and
children work together and how they go about improving the
school.
Our report describes the ‘ethos’ of the school. By ‘ethos’ we
mean the relationships in the school, how well children are cared
for and treated and how much is expected of them in all aspects
of school life. Finally, we comment on the school’s aims. In
particular, we focus on how well the aims help staff to deliver high
quality learning, and the impact of leadership on the school’s
success in achieving these aims.
If you would like to learn more about our inspection of the school,
please visit www.hmie.gov.uk. Here you can find analyses of
questionnaire returns. Where applicable, you will also be able to
find descriptions of good practice in the school.
1
2
The term ‘school’ is used to include the work of the nursery
class, where relevant.
Throughout this report, the term ‘parents’ should be taken to
include foster carers, residential care staff and carers who are
relatives or friends.
Contents
1. The school
2. Particular strengths of the school
3. Example of Good Practice
4. How well do children learn and achieve?
5. How well do staff work with others to support children’s learning?
6. Are staff and children actively involved in improving their school
community?
7. Does the school have high expectations of all children?
8. Does the school have a clear sense of direction?
9. What happens next?
1. The school
Alva Primary School is a non-denominational school with a nursery
class. It serves the town of Alva and the surrounding Hillfoot areas.
The roll was 420, including 43 in the nursery, when the inspection was
carried out in May 2009. Children’s attendance was in line with the
national average in 2007/08.
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2. Particular strengths of the school
•
Well-behaved, polite and courteous children.
•
The contribution of the headteacher and staff to developing
children’s wider achievements, particularly in sport.
•
Relationships with parents and the wider community.
•
The development of enterprise activities for children.
3. Example of Good Practice
•
The school’s promotion of health and sport.
4. How well do children learn and achieve?
Learning and achievement
In the nursery class, children are happy and settled. They know
simple routines and are motivated by the range of activities on offer.
Children respond well to opportunities to explore and investigate.
They are confident when choosing toys and making decisions when
playing. All children are forming friendships, play well together and are
able to share and take turns. They are kind and caring towards each
other. Across the primary stages, most children enjoy learning and
complete activities well without supervision. Children are benefiting
from opportunities to be active in their learning. At the primary stages,
they often discuss their work and use clear feedback about their
progress to improve their work. They work well with each other and
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are increasingly becoming independent learners. The school provides
most children with a range of opportunities to achieve widely, including
after-school activities, school shows and an outstanding range of
sporting events. Across the school, children are developing good skills
in art and design through collage, painting and drawing. In the
nursery, a few children can use chalk outdoors to create detailed
drawings of people. Across primary classes, children have appropriate
skills in environmental studies. They have a good understanding of
healthy lifestyles and how to keep themselves safe. At P6 and P7,
children are developing their performing skills well by creating a film on
positive coaching in sports. They are also working as responsible
citizens through fundraising for charities and linking with a school in
Nigeria.
Children in the nursery class achieve well across all areas of their
learning and development. They listen carefully during story times.
They are confident when talking to adults and other children. Children
use the writing table well to communicate ideas. They can measure
and compare volumes in play activities involving water and sand.
Almost all children can recognise numbers to ten. At the primary
stages, children are making good progress overall in English language
and mathematics. Attainment in reading, writing and mathematics has
increased steadily over the last few years. Most are achieving
appropriate national levels of attainment in reading, writing and
mathematics. At the early stages, most children are achieving these
levels early. However, often they do not maintain these high
standards as they move through the school. In English language,
most children listen and talk well to their teacher and groups. Most
children enjoy reading and read confidently. They write well for a
variety of purposes and audiences. In mathematics, most children are
accurate when calculating mentally and doing written number work. A
few cannot carry out mental and written calculations quickly enough.
Children can confidently discuss features of different shapes and
interpret information from a range of graphs and charts. The majority
of children are not always sufficiently confident and skilled when
working on solving problems.
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Curriculum and meeting learning needs
Across nursery and primary classes, staff plan a broad and balanced
range of experiences for children. In the nursery class, children learn
well through play. Staff have begun to plan daily activities to take
more account of children’s interests and concerns and are improving
the link between children’s indoor and outdoor learning experiences.
Across primary classes, they are using the national initiative,
Curriculum for Excellence to build more fully on children’s prior
learning. The school has made a good start to developing children’s
literacy and numeracy skills in different areas of the curriculum.
Children’s experiences in physical education are of very high quality.
The school is actively working towards two hours of physical education
each week for all children. Staff have developed a wide range of
successful enterprise activities for children. These include the link with
a local hotel for the Burns supper. Across the school, children’s
learning is enriched by visits and visitors to the school. In recent
months, the school has not been able to offer French to children at P6
and P7 due to staff absences. Children would benefit from
opportunities to apply their skills in information and communications
technology in the computer suite more widely across the curriculum.
Overall, staff meet children’s learning needs well, although at times
work is too easy for higher achieving children. In the nursery class,
staff match activities and resources closely to most children’s
individual needs. Nursery staff do not always use their observations of
children’s learning well enough to plan next steps in learning. A
number of nursery routines are too adult-directed. Children need more
choices and more chances to plan their own learning and develop their
own interests. Across the primary stages, tasks and activities are at
the right level of difficulty for most children. Support staff work closely
with teachers and provide well-judged help to individuals and small
groups of children. Individualised educational programmes (IEPs) help
a few children having difficulties with their learning to achieve success
and make progress. The school now needs to extend the use of IEPs
to include more children with additional support needs and monitor
their progress more closely. Teachers tell children the purposes of
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lessons and explain things clearly. They use questioning well to
encourage children’s thinking and sum up what children have been
learning at the end of lessons. Children benefit from regular and
varied homework.
5. How well do staff work with others to support children’s
learning?
Teachers have developed good working partnerships with parents.
They keep parents well informed about their children’s progress
through meetings and a helpful annual report. Staff are effective at
sorting out complaints from parents, children and other members of
the community. Parents are pleased with the work of the school.
Parents receive useful information about the school’s education on
sensitive health issues. The Parent Council and the parent-teacher
association work closely with the school and have recently helped to
fund the school’s garden project. Staff have close and effective links
with a number of local organisations, including the local church,
voluntary service and businesses. The school has developed good
links with schools in other countries through an international project to
broaden children’s achievements. Through the school’s liaison group,
a range of agencies support children’s learning. Children are well
supported when transferring from nursery to P1 and from P7 to Alva
Academy.
6. Are staff and children actively involved in improving their
school community?
Children respond well to opportunities to take on responsibilities within
the school. Older children act as buddies to younger ones. The pupil
council and the ‘pupil action’ group influence aspects of school life.
For example, they suggested improvements to the playground,
organised litter pickers and raised awareness of healthy snacks. As a
result, the school has achieved three awards from Eco-Schools
Scotland and an award at silver level as a health promoting school.
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Children feel they have a say in making their school better. In the
nursery class, staff are involved in discussions with one another to
reflect on their work and children’s learning. The headteacher
discusses the work of the school with staff and the pupil council.
Teachers are fully involved in evaluating their work and their
contribution to school improvements. They have started to improve
the monitoring of children’s progress throughout the year. This should
now be further developed to continue to raise children’s attainment.
7. Does the school have high expectations of all children?
Staff create a welcoming, caring and supportive ethos. Staff know the
children very well and are sensitive to their needs. They set high
standards for children’s learning and behaviour. Staff and children
have positive relationships. Children feel safe at school and are
learning about making healthy choices. They are well-behaved and
polite in class and in the playground. Staff show concern for children’s
wellbeing and are aware of the school’s approaches to child
protection. All teachers provide children with a very wide range of
after-school and out-of-school activities. Children and staff are proud
of the school and recognise achievements regularly at assemblies, in
classrooms and through displays. Staff promote equality and
celebrate different cultures throughout the school. The local minister
supports religious observance at assemblies.
8. Does the school have a clear sense of direction?
The headteacher has a clear vision for the school and has identified
appropriate areas for improvement with support from the management
team. He has very positive relationships with staff, children and
parents. He has made very effective links outside the school to
improve children’s learning experiences. The principal teachers have
been effective in improving aspects of English language and in
establishing the school action group. Staff take responsibility for
leading improvements to different aspects of the school’s work.
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Working with the education authority, the school can continue to
improve.
9. What happens next?
We are confident that the school will be able to make the
necessary improvements in light of the inspection findings. As a
result, we will make no more visits following this inspection. The
school and the education authority will inform parents about the
school’s progress in improving the quality of education.
We have agreed the following areas for improvement with the school
and education authority.
•
Continue to develop the curriculum in line with Curriculum for
Excellence to build on children’s prior learning.
•
Meet children’s different learning needs more fully.
•
Strengthen arrangements for monitoring of children’s progress to
improve their learning and attainment.
At the last Care Commission inspection of the nursery class there
were no requirements and one recommendation. This had been
fully addressed by the nursery.
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Quality indicators help schools and nursery classes, education
authorities and inspectors to judge what is good and what needs to be
improved in the work of a school and a nursery class. You can find
these quality indicators in the HMIE publications How good is our
school? and The Child at the Centre. Following the inspection of each
school, the Scottish Government gathers evaluations of three
important quality indicators to keep track of how well all Scottish
schools and nursery classes are doing.
Here are the evaluations for Alva Primary School and Nursery Class
Primary School
Improvements in performance
Learners’ experiences
Meeting learning needs
good
very good
satisfactory
Nursery Class
Improvements in performance
Learners’ experiences
Meeting learning needs
good
good
satisfactory
We also evaluated the following aspects of the work of the school and
nursery class.
The curriculum
Improvement through self-evaluation
HM Inspector: Sadie Cushley
25 August 2009
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good
good
To find out more about inspections or get an electronic copy of this
report go to www.hmie.gov.uk. Please contact the Business
Management and Communications Team (BMCT) if you wish to
enquire about our arrangements for translated or other appropriate
versions.
If you wish to comment about any of our inspections, contact us
at HMIEenquiries@hmie.gsi.gov.uk or alternatively you should write in
the first instance to BMCT, HM Inspectorate of Education, Denholm
House, Almondvale Business Park, Almondvale Way,
Livingston EH54 6GA.
Our complaints procedure is available from our website
www.hmie.gov.uk or alternatively you can write to our Complaints
Manager, at the address above or by telephoning 01506 600259.
If you are not satisfied with the action we have taken at the end of our
complaints procedure, you can raise your complaint with the Scottish
Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO). The SPSO is fully independent
and has powers to investigate complaints about Government
departments and agencies. You should write to SPSO, Freepost
EH641, Edinburgh EH3 0BR. You can also telephone 0800 377 7330,
fax 0800 377 7331 or e-mail: ask@spso.org.uk. More information
about the Ombudsman’s office can be obtained from the website
at www.spso.org.uk.
This report uses the following word scale to make clear
judgements made by inspectors.
excellent
very good
good
satisfactory
weak
unsatisfactory
outstanding, sector leading
major strengths
important strengths with some areas for
improvement
strengths just outweigh weaknesses
important weaknesses
major weaknesses
Crown Copyright 2009
HM Inspectorate of Education