Ofsted

We are delighted to share our latest Ofsted report that confirms that we continue to be ‘a good school’.  This report celebrates the many achievements of our school and reflects the talents and day-to-day efforts of our staff, students and wider community. This good result resulted from a team effort involving all of our students, parents and staff, which was highlighted in many of the Inspector’s comments. Particularly heart warming was the comment:

‘What is remarkable here, is the warm relationships that exist between staff and pupils. All staff are united in their shared vision to do their best for pupils at this school. Teachers and support staff are proud to make a difference for the pupils in their care. The majority of pupils are keen to do well. They behave well in lessons and as they move around the school. This is a happy and caring school, where pupils flourish’.

We have two development areas to look at before our next inspection:

• To ensure that students recall important knowledge over time. The report highlights that some, and it was a very small number, students could not recall some information around fundamental British Values and world religions after the summer holidays. This is always the difficulty with having an inspection in the second week of term but it should be noted that this issue has nothing to do with our excellent RS department or PSHE leads and teaching, as they did not form part of the inspection.
• Our other development point surrounds early reading and this has already been addressed as we were using an older phonics programme. We have ordered a Department for Education approved synthetic phonics package that will be implemented in school this term.

Overall, the inspection process was very thorough and the entire staff are very pleased with the validation of their efforts. I have seldom read an Ofsted report that is so complimentary of the school and once again, this is down to the hard work of all of our stakeholders.

Our subject leader for RS has also included the following message:

The R.S department is concerned about the comment in the Ofsted Report regarding World Religions. You would be forgiven for thinking that our department had been inspected, but I want to assure you that this is  not the case. None of our lessons were observed, our curriculum was not seen and we were not interviewed by either of the inspectors.  We were not subject to any inspection. We are very proud of our curriculum, which covers the beliefs and practices of all the major world faiths, and Philosophy and Ethics in year 9. Thank you for reading this.

Luke Weston

Headteacher

Download the full report here