Notre Dame High School, Norwich

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

Notre Dame High School provides an outstanding education, both in the main school and in the sixth from. It provides outstanding value for money. A key strength is its broad interpretation of what education means.

Students are not just taught how to pass examinations, but also to become reflective thinkers, with high moral standards and compassion for others. The school's ethos is one of high expectations in which every student matters. It works hard to realise the full potential of every student, both academically and in preparation for their future lives.

This is reflected in the exemplary quality of its care, guidance and support and in the outstanding curriculum, which is highly flexible ...to cater for students' different interests and aptitudes. Consequently, students' attainment is high and their behaviour and personal development are outstanding. As a result of the good and sometimes outstanding teaching, all groups of students make good progress.

The well organised learning support for pupils with statements of special educational needs includes effective classroom support and well focused withdrawal sessions. This provision helps them to learn effectively. Since he took over in September 2010, the headteacher has maintained the school's relentless pursuit of excellence, by setting very ambitious targets for academic achievement while maintaining the school's caring and inclusive outlook.

His restructuring of the leadership team has been a major factor in the drive for improvement. Since their responsibilities have been more tightly defined, senior leaders have led a number of initiatives. These include bolstering the behaviour management system, improving the school's engagement with parents and carers, enhancing the curriculum and improving the tracking of students' progress.

Leaders at all levels are now closely involved in the school's self-evaluation. The school has largely eliminated the minority of disruptive behaviour noted in the last inspection. In the sixth form, a successful International Baccalaureate course has now been established.

Concerns about the performance of boys with low prior attainment have been addressed. These changes have led to still higher attainment, demonstrating the school's outstanding capacity to improve. Students' behaviour is excellent and makes a strong contribution to their outstanding achievement.

Students make an outstanding contribution to the school and wider community, locally, nationally and globally. They are keen to express their ideas and views through discussion, surveys and through the well established school council. Students are prepared exceptionally well for their future lives.

They apply their basic skills highly effectively in a variety of contexts. Their leadership and team-working skills are particularly well developed. They develop into articulate, confident and thoughtful young people who can present well reasoned arguments and who are ready to take on further challenges and responsibilities.

As befits a training school, the school has effective systems for addressing teachers' professional development needs once they are identified. Notre Dame has some outstanding teachers who bring their subjects alive. Teaching is good or better in a large majority of lessons, but students' progress falls short of being outstanding because teaching is not yet consistently good.

In the satisfactory lessons observed, teachers did not use assessment well enough to enhance students' learning. The reasons varied. Some teachers created few opportunities for assessment because : they did not allocate enough time to independent work by students; others did not exploit the assessment opportunities that arose.

In a few lessons, teachers did not use the information available to them about students' literacy and mathematical skills to set appropriately challenging tasks. The school's own records show that lesson observations do not always pinpoint the specific improvements needed to improve satisfactory teaching. The evaluation of teaching and learning by senior leaders is usually accurate and perceptive, but some subject leaders focus too much on the teacher, with not enough emphasis on the impact of teaching on students' learning.

In taking the school from good to outstanding, senior leaders have naturally had to prioritise their time. There are two areas in particular, where the school has not sufficiently documented and formalised its practice. Although they develop into very good citizens, students were not able to identify how they were taught citizenship, because the school had not mapped out formally how it meets the citizenship requirements of the National Curriculum.

Similarly, although the school's work in the community is well established, the school has not formally analysed all aspects of its context, or created a specific plan for its promotion of community cohesion. As a result, it is not well set up to evaluate the impact of its work, and for this reason, the promotion of community cohesion can only be judged satisfactory.

Information about the school

Notre Dame High School is a large school with a sixth form that attracts a considerable number of new students each year from other schools.

As it is the only Catholic high school in Norfolk, some students travel long distances to attend. The proportion of students known to be entitled to free school meals is below average. Around one in six students is from a minority ethnic background.

The proportion of students with special educational needs and/or disabilities is below average, but the proportion with statements of special educational needs is above average. The school is a training school and a specialist school for both languages and science. In Key Stage 4 and the sixth form, it collaborates with other local schools and colleges to provide additional courses.

The school has many awards including Healthy Schools, Investors in Families, Eco-School, Artsmark Silver, Sportsmark, Work-Related Learning Silver, International Schools and the Princess Diana Memorial Award. The school is currently consulting on a proposal to apply for academy status. As with all faith schools, the school's religious character is subject to a separate inspection.