The best start for every child

Ofsted reports

Woodberry Down is an outstanding school that provides high quality education for all its pupils. The executive principal is an inspirational leader who has built an excellent team of assistant headteachers. Together they have very high expectations of pupils and staff and ensure the school's policies and procedures are applied consistently. Teaching and learning are outstanding, as pupils make very rapid progress from low starting points to reach the national average by the end of Year 6. Refugees and pupils who start school speaking little or no English do particularly well, and the level of pastoral care for all pupils is outstanding. Outstanding leadership and management ensure that the school has continued to make considerable progress since its last inspection. The federation with another school in Hackney has given new leadership responsibilities to a wide range of staff, and this has enabled a very strong team of assistant headteachers to be developed. Monitoring of the school's work is rigorous and systematic, and a sophisticated database enables information to be stored and exchanged quickly and efficiently. The school benefits from the support of an outstanding governing body that brings a high level of expertise in discharging its duties. The school is a vibrant and successful learning community and has an outstanding capacity to improve further.

Mandeville Primary is a good school. It is improving rapidly and starting to exhibit some outstanding features. The remarkable progress that has taken place in less than a year stems directly from working in partnership with the federation. Inspiring leadership throughout the school, but particularly from the executive principal, is instrumental in this improvement and is helping to lay very firm foundations for future success. Consistency of approach, high expectations and challenging targets for staff and pupils are the key, along with a concerted and relentless drive to secure more effective teaching and learning. A new team of teachers, some quite inexperienced, has knitted together quickly into a cohesive unit, all very keen to improve. Teaching is improving rapidly as the school is able to draw on expertise from across the federation to develop teachers’ skills. Parents and carers are delighted with the improvements that they see taking place on almost a daily basis. Progress is accelerating throughout the school and starting to eliminate a legacy of underachievement from the past. This is because teachers are transforming the pupils from passive learners with low expectations of what they can achieve, as seen in some poor quality work in their old books, into active learners with higher aspirations. There are two key reasons for this. First, the dialogue established by teachers through highly effective marking emphasises their high expectations and ensures that pupils can reflect on how to improve their work. Second, pupils become engaged in learning as they discuss questions posed with their ‘talk partner’.The pupils’ experiences are rich and interesting on a daily basis, with educational trips a particularly memorable highlight for them. From starting points well below those expected on entry to the school, particularly in literacy, pupils make good progress so that attainment is average by the end of Year 6. The emphasis on improving basic skills, particularly in reading, is having a dramatic effect for all pupils, not just by improving reading but also their enjoyment of books. This is also helping, in particular, to engage boys more in their writing by directly linking tasks to the books they are reading.