Ysgol Rhiwabon

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Ysgol Rhiwabon is a caring and inclusive school, which strives to support its pupils to 'succeed with soul' and to develop both academically and personally.

Staff are ambitious for all pupils to achieve their full potential and leave school prepared for the next steps in their lives. The school uses a range of valuable strategies to promote good attendance and has reintroduced a fortnightly lesson to ensure that all pupils have regular opportunities to learn about how to keep themselves safe and healthy. As a result, many pupils feel safe in school and participate well in learning.

Most pupils behave well in lessons and around the school site. Younger pupils benefit from effective transition arrangements to help them settl...e well into school life. In addition, pupils with additional learning needs receive helpful support to enable them to develop their academic and life skills.

Since the school was removed from special measures in November 2017, leaders at the school have continued to work diligently to develop its provision for well-being and teaching. Alongside this, they responded sensitively to support the school community through the challenges of the pandemic. The headteacher has managed change carefully while increasing expectations for staff and pupils.

There is a strong sense of collaboration amongst staff and pupils. Leaders at all levels understand the importance of participating in a range of worthwhile quality assurance activities. They use first-hand evidence well to self-evaluate their work and plan for improvement.

They identify strengths and areas for improvement accurately. However, a few middle leaders do not always evaluate the quality of teaching based on its impact on pupils' learning. Staff value and benefit from a wide range of professional learning opportunities, which are beginning to have a positive impact on teaching.

The school offers a broad and balanced curriculum, including a wide range of worthwhile academic and vocational subjects to meet the needs of nearly all pupils. In lessons, a majority of pupils make good progress in their knowledge and understanding. These pupils make suitable contributions to class discussions and use subject specific terminology appropriately.

Many pupils locate facts and information from texts accurately and can write suitably for a range of purposes and audiences. In a few subjects, pupils infer meaning effectively from texts and write sophisticated accounts to explain the purpose of a range of sources. A small minority of pupils do not make as much progress as they could.

This is linked to shortcomings in teaching including lack of opportunities for pupils to progressively develop their numeracy and ICT skills across the curriculum. In addition, opportunities for pupils to use and develop their Welsh language skills in lessons and around the school are underdeveloped. Recommendations R1 Improve the quality of teaching to ensure that all pupils make strong progress in subject knowledge and understanding and skills R2 Strengthen the provision for the development of pupils' Welsh language, numeracy and ICT skills R3 Further develop self-evaluation processes so that they focus more precisely on the impact of provision on pupils' learning R4 Address the health and safety issues identified during the inspection What happens next The school will draw up an action plan to address the recommendations from the inspection.