Whitelees Primary School
Cumbernauld
North Lanarkshire Council
23 August 2011
HM Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) inspects schools in order to
let parents1, children and the local community know whether their
school provides a good education. Inspectors also discuss with
school staff how they can improve the quality of education.
At the beginning of the inspection, we ask the headteacher and
staff about the strengths of the school, what needs to improve,
and how they know. We use the information they give us to help
us plan what we are going to look at. During the inspection, we
go into classes and join other activities in which children are
involved. We also gather the views of children, parents, staff and
members of the local community. We find their views very helpful
and use them together with the other information we have
collected to arrive at our view of the quality of education.
This report tells you what we found during the inspection and the
quality of education in the school. We describe how well children
are doing, how good the school is at helping them to learn and
how well it cares for them. We comment on how well staff,
parents and children work together and how they go about
improving the school. We also comment on how well the school
works with other groups in the community, including services
which support children. Finally, we focus on how well the school
is led and how staff help the school achieve its 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 from children, parents and staff. We will
not provide questionnaire analyses where the numbers of returns
are so small that they could identify individuals.
1
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. How well do children learn and achieve?
4. How well do staff work with others to support children’s learning?
5. Are staff and children actively involved in improving their school
community?
6. Does the school have high expectations of all children?
7. Does the school have a clear sense of direction?
8. What happens next?
1. The school
Whitelees Primary School is a non-denominational school. It serves
the Abronhill area of Cumbernauld. The roll was 368 when the
inspection was carried out in May 2011. Children’s attendance was in
line with the national average in 2009/2010. Around a third of children
attend the school as a result of parental placing requests.
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2. Particular strengths of the school
•
Highly motivated, confident and ambitious children who are keen to
learn and to make a difference in school and the wider community.
•
Children’s achievements, especially their attainment in writing and
mathematics, and the respect and care they show for one another.
•
The impact on children’s learning and development of all the ways
the school meets their needs.
•
Very effective teamwork, which helps children and staff to celebrate
the school’s strengths and plan improvements.
•
Partnerships with parents and members of the community.
•
The headteacher’s inspirational leadership.
3. How well do children learn and achieve?
Learning and achievement
The quality of children’s learning and achievement in and beyond the
classroom is outstanding. Children feel happy, valued and well cared
for and so take on challenges and responsibilities with confidence. At
all stages, they are keen to talk about what they would like to learn
next and how they think they could improve their work. They
particularly enjoy applying what they know to the world around them.
Children work extremely well with others, both in class groups and on
projects with visitors to the school. They ask thoughtful questions and
think creatively when they investigate new ideas and information.
They also use digital cameras, computers and other technology very
well, to learn and to share their work.
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Children have the confidence and ambition to achieve across a wide
range of activities. They are rightly very proud of their successes in
helping the school achieve four Eco-Schools Scotland green flags.
They also work creatively to raise large amounts of money for
international charities. Children perform very well in individual and
team sports, developing self-discipline and strong teamwork. Their
singing, dance and drama are of a high standard and the school’s very
popular rock band has achieved notable successes.
Children produce an impressive range of high-quality work across all
areas of their learning and are making very strong progress. Almost
all do particularly well in English and mathematics and use their
literacy and numeracy skills very effectively across their learning.
Children listen carefully and express themselves clearly on a variety of
topics. They are developing very good research skills and an
understanding of the need to check how reliable sources of information
are. The quality and range of children’s written work is a key strength
of the school. Almost all children are secure in their understanding
and use of numbers, measurement and time. In the upper stages,
children work very confidently with angles and draw very well to scale.
They can also work out monthly and annual expenditure to manage a
suggested family budget. Children remember and use vocabulary
correctly in French, Spanish and Gaelic as they broaden their
experience of other languages. They express themselves very well
through their art and design work, in vivid pictures and well-made clay
items. In projects like designing and producing a fruit cart to promote
healthy eating, children use a variety of technology and enterprise
skills very well.
Curriculum and meeting learning needs
The school has developed an excellent curriculum which is preparing
all children for successful learning and for life. Children have very
enjoyable, relevant and very well-planned experiences. The
curriculum builds on very effective teaching and learning approaches,
indoors and outdoors, and is designed to help children use their prior
learning. Across the stages, staff plan different aspects of learning so
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well that children regularly make links across their learning and
develop a deeper understanding. Staff make sure that children can
use and develop their literacy and numeracy skills and awareness of
health and wellbeing, in different situations. Visitors also help to
broaden children’s learning by sharing their own experiences and
working alongside children. The school has very effective
arrangements to help children and their families prepare for P1. By
the end of P7, the quality and range of children’s learning prepares
them very well for the transition to secondary school.
The school’s arrangements for meeting learning needs are also of a
very high standard. As a result of all that the school does to help
children make progress, children develop important skills and strong
confidence in their abilities to learn and achieve well. Staff across the
school know children very well indeed and are very sensitive to their
individual needs. Teachers plan activities very carefully to give
children different ways to learn and succeed. They ask children open
questions to develop their thinking, and encourage children to ask their
own questions to extend their learning. The organisation of tasks and
the time allowed gives children the right balance of challenge and
support to make progress. A well-planned variety of homework also
helps children to learn well and develop their confidence. A very
effective team of classroom assistants and an auxiliary for children
with additional support needs helps children with difficulties in their
learning to make very good progress. The school involves these
children and their parents very well in setting up and reviewing
additional support plans.
4. How well do staff work with others to support children’s
learning?
The school works very well with parents and members of the wider
community to help children’s learning. The highly-valued support of
the Parent Council and parent-teacher association makes an important
difference to children’s experiences. Specialists from educational
support agencies help children who have difficulties with their learning
to develop their skills and confidence to learn well. Another very
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productive partnership is the school’s link with Cumbernauld College,
which helps children to further develop their skills for learning, life and
work. For example, it has introduced children to the ‘Red Chair’ as an
innovative way to make a difference. It has also given them the
experience of designing and producing items to a high standard.
5. Are staff and children actively involved in improving their
school community?
Staff and children have developed an extremely strong culture of
working together to improve their school. Children are very actively
involved. They share their views about how to make things better in
regular discussions with their teachers and in focus groups with the
headteacher. Children work hard to make a difference through their
committee work, representing children’s views effectively. They also
make very good use of the wide range of opportunities they have to
raise issues and ideas, which are followed up by children and staff.
Staff, including clerical and janitorial staff, are ambitious for the
children and for the school as a community. In working groups, and
through their individual leadership roles, teachers develop and improve
important aspects of the school’s work. The school has very rigorous
approaches to checking the quality of its work. These include detailed,
honest and constructive feedback on learning and teaching when
promoted staff and teachers observe lessons. The school
improvement plan sets appropriately high expectations for
improvements in learners’ experiences and teaching, and there is clear
evidence of its impact. Major successes include improvements in the
quality of children’s writing and the development of relevant contexts
for learning, to help children make connections between different
activities.
6. Does the school have high expectations of all children?
Children and staff set themselves very high expectations. Staff
encourage children to set and then exceed their personal best, and
very often they do. Assemblies enthusiastically celebrate children’s
many successes in and beyond school. Children are as proud of
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others’ achievements as they are of their own. The school is
developing ways of supporting children to build on their achievements
to help them meet the learning targets they set for themselves.
Children behave very well and the standard of presentation in their
classwork is extremely high. Staff take their responsibilities for child
protection very seriously. They also help children to flourish by
actively promoting healthy lifestyles and respect for equalities.
Children respect other people’s views and show a high degree of
self-respect. Staff involve children in regular religious observance,
with the support of the chaplain.
7. Does the school have a clear sense of direction?
The school has a very clear sense of direction. As a community, the
school has developed confidence from sharing leadership
responsibilities so that it can benefit from different strengths. The
headteacher’s own leadership is inspirational. Not only does she lead
extremely well by example, she also encourages and supports staff
and children to introduce and manage changes. The highly-skilled
depute headteacher and the very reflective principal teachers support
the headteacher, children and staff very well. By working together so
successfully, children, staff, parents and partners make Whitelees
Primary School very well placed to continue to provide a very high
quality of learning.
8. What happens next?
The inspection team was able to rely on the school’s robust
self-evaluation. As a result, it was able to change its focus during the
inspection.
The school provides an excellent quality of education. Therefore, we
will make no further visits in connection with this inspection. The
education authority will inform parents about the school’s progress as
part of the authority’s arrangements for reporting to parents on the
quality of its schools.
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We have agreed the following area for improvement with the school
and education authority.
•
In line with current plans, continue to develop ways of giving
children and staff an enhanced role in setting school targets and
planning further improvements.
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 Whitelees Primary School.
Improvements in performance
Learners’ experiences
Meeting learning needs
excellent
excellent
excellent
We also evaluated the following aspects of the work of the school.
The curriculum
Improvement through self-evaluation
HM Inspector: Mary Ritchie
23 August 2011
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excellent
excellent
When we write reports, we use the following word scale so that our
readers can see clearly what our judgments mean.
excellent
very good
good
means
means
means
satisfactory
weak
unsatisfactory
means
means
means
outstanding, sector leading
major strengths
important strengths with some areas
for improvement
strengths just outweigh weaknesses
important weaknesses
major weaknesses
If you would like to find out more about our inspections or get an
electronic copy of this report, please go to www.hmie.gov.uk.
Please contact us if you want to know how to get the report in a
different format, for example, in a translation, or if you wish to
comment about any aspect of our inspections. You can contact us
at HMIEenquiries@hmie.gsi.gov.uk or write to us at BMCT,
HM Inspectorate of Education, Denholm House, Almondvale Business
Park, Almondvale Way, Livingston EH54 6GA.
Text phone users can contact us on 01506 600 236. This is a service
for deaf users. Please do not use this number for voice calls as the
line will not connect you to a member of staff.
You can find our complaints procedure on our website
www.hmie.gov.uk or alternatively you can contact our Complaints
Manager, at the address above or by telephoning 01506 600259.
Crown Copyright 2011
HM Inspectorate of Education