Author: omsadmin
Ofsted Report October 2019
Dear Parents and Guardians,
It gives me great pleasure to attach with this letter, our Ofsted report following our section 8 inspection on 24th and 25th September. You may be aware that Ofsted have recently launched a new framework, where in the words of our inspector ‘the bar has been raised considerably’.
Our Ofsted inspection was the first in Milton Keynes under the new framework and I am pleased to say that OMS is a ‘Good’ school. When I joined the school in 2015, Olney Middle School had undergone many changes, most notably a complete overhaul of the senior leadership team. Inevitably this brought with it many challenges where we regrouped, created a whole new leadership team, drove school improvement and in 2017 changed our whole governance structure where we became an academy and joined Inspiring Futures through Learning Multi Academy Trust.
What has never changed though is the commitment and dedication of our amazing staff who work tirelessly to provide an education that is inclusive, engaging, exciting and challenging for all our pupils. It is based around wanting the best for our pupils, as the inspector noted “Leaders are highly ambitious for pupils”. Our pupils have the potential to achieve amazing things, and everyone who works at OMS cares passionately about the pupils and how they progress throughout their journey, preparing them
well as they move to Secondary School. Our pupils are the key, as the inspector noted “Pupils behave well. In lessons, they listen carefully to their teachers…pupils are keen to answer questions…pupils are respectful, kind and considerate”.
As you will know, we have focused strongly over the past few years on embedding our approach in the teaching of Maths and English. We are therefore pleased with the inspector noting “teaching is highly effective and pupils are confident mathematicians… reading is taught well…pupils experience high quality texts carefully linked… are supported by expert teaching”. We also relaunched our curriculum last year and it was pleasing to note that in strong subjects such as Geography the inspector noted “pupils skills are developed well within themes”. Like all schools nationally, we are still very much on a journey with the new framework, and the inspector, in line with our own self-evaluation, has noted that we need to continue this drive across all subjects now.
We all know, however, that results like this only come from great team work. To that end I would like to say thank you for your commitment and trust in us. Your feedback has been invaluable. The passion you have for your children combined with our commitment to ensuring our children are happy, successful and resilient learners has resulted in this amazing achievement. As the inspection recognises, there are lots of fantastic things happening at our school which we should all be rightly proud of. Together with your passion, and the talent of our pupils and staff within our school, we can continue to work together to move the school to Outstanding, as the inspector noted “the school provides a good and improving quality of education”.
I am sure you will enjoy reading this report.
Kind regards from a very proud headteacher,
Glenn Young
Behaviour policy booklet
Dear Parents,
At Olney Middle School, we set high standards for the behaviour of all children and staff. We know that parents are very supportive when it comes to the recognition, praise and reward that their child gets at school. We also know that, should there be occasion for it, parents would like to know and be involved with the process of dealing with any negative behavioural incidents. We have designed this booklet, in line with our behaviour policy, to ensure the expectations of behaviour, rewards, sanctions and our new values are clear to all.
Yours faithfully
Mr Palmer
Assistant Headteacher for Inclusion
