Alun School Mold

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Alun School is a caring and inclusive community where leaders prioritise pupils' emotional well-being and promote a positive culture of safeguarding. Pupils take on numerous leadership roles and have affected valuable changes in the school.

They collaborate well with staff and each other to ensure that everyone has the right 'to teach, to learn, to be safe and to be respected'. The headteacher provides assured leadership and ensures strong accountability at all levels. Her vision is clear and is shared and understood by senior leaders who demonstrate this through their support to the headteacher and in their own work.

In general, leaders have a sound understanding of the strengths and areas for improvement of the provision... in their areas of responsibility. Their self-evaluation, however, does not always consider the impact of the provision on the standard of pupils' learning well enough. There are many strengths in teaching.

Most teachers use their subject knowledge to good effect and give clear and precise explanations. Many teachers plan suitable activities to develop pupils' learning. They have high expectations of what pupils can achieve, ask useful questions to check for understanding and give beneficial verbal feedback on their work.

This enables many pupils to make at least suitable progress and practice their literacy, numeracy and Welsh language skills appropriately. However, the quality of teacher assessment varies and is not always effective enough to enable pupils to improve their work. Whilst leaders have recently taken a strategic approach to plan the progression of skills across the curriculum, this work is still in its infancy.

Many pupils are considerate, polite and courteous to others. They behave appropriately in lessons and around the school. Staff use strategies to manage behaviour through a positive approach, but these are not always implemented consistently.

In addition, the school's approach to managing behaviour is not having enough impact in addressing the poor behaviour of a few pupils in lessons. The school provides a broad and balanced curriculum that give pupils an appropriate range of learning experiences. The pupils within the Hearing Support Centre (HSC) receive highly effective support and access mainstream classes where they are supported well.

The school offers comprehensive and worthwhile support for pupils' with additional learning needs (ALN). Pupils in the sixth form are supported well in making suitable career choices and talk positively about their learning experiences. They engage with tasks productively, show resilience when working independently and persevere when faced with new challenges.

Recommendations R1 Strengthen self-evaluation to focus more on the impact of provision on pupils' learning R2 Improve strategies to address the poor behaviour of a few pupils and its impact on other pupils R3 Improve quality of assessment and feedback to enable pupils to improve their work R4 Embed provision for skills development fully across the curriculum