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Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Leaders, staff and members of the trust are ambitious for pupils' futures.

All pupils who leave the school at the end of Year 11 move on to further education, employment or training.

Pupils' attitudes towards their learning are positive. They are keen to listen and respond effectively to teachers' instructions.

Low-level disruption rarely occurs. If it does, staff quickly and skilfully respond, therefore pupils' learning in class is mostly uninterrupted.

The school gets to know pupils and their circumstances well.

Staff and pupils develop strong working relationships that help pupils to feel safe in school. All pupils have adults here that t...hey trust and can talk to if they are worried or upset.

Pupils' development is enriched through a range of experiences, visits and activities.

Pupils have opportunities to work alongside peers from other schools within the trust through sports teams and taking part in cultural events and theatrical productions. They go on visits that provide insight into life in modern Britain and the world of work. Pupils plan fundraising events and raise money for charities in which they may have a personal interest.

What does the school do well and what does it need to do better?

The school has in place a curriculum that helps pupils to learn new content in a logical order and to build up their knowledge steadily over time. The curriculum is designed to cater for pupils who are on either academic or vocational pathways. It equips pupils with the skills and qualifications that they need for their future steps.

The school recently changed its pupil intake to include pupils in Year 8. The school is refining curriculum thinking further to ensure that in all subjects, pupils' knowledge and skills build cumulatively in all year groups.

When pupils join the school, teachers check what pupils already know and can do in different subjects.

This enables teachers to identify any gaps and misconceptions and plan learning that will enable pupils to catch up. Teachers said these checks have had a positive impact on their workload. However, the school does not clearly identify pupils who have gaps in their phonics knowledge.

Even though staff use additional lessons to support pupils' reading skills generally, these do not routinely focus on developing pupils' phonics knowledge for decoding and building fluency.

The school ensures that pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) have what they need to access their learning. Teachers put into practice the training they have received through the school and information from specialists and professionals to make adaptations to lessons, resources and teaching.

This enables pupils with SEND to learn alongside their peers.

The school has put in place personalised mentoring support to help pupils resolve personal challenges. Alongside mentors, pupils work on goals and develop strategies that will help them to manage their own emotions, behaviour and well-being.

This mentor support is newly introduced and therefore it is too soon to measure the impact of this.

Pupils are encouraged to think about the implications of making poor choices, in relation to their health, relationships and actions in and outside school. Pupils are taught about the dangers of substance misuse through the school's personal, social and health education curriculum.

The school provides pupils with impartial careers advice and guidance, which helps pupils to think and make decisions about their next steps. The academic curriculum and personal development programme provide pupils with opportunities to gain experience of different vocations, such as finance, catering, and health and social care.

Leaders make a point of getting to understand the barriers that may have impeded pupils' attendance in the past.

Leaders monitor the regularity of pupils' attendance and intervene if attendance rates fall. Typically, as a result of the school's work, pupils' attendance and consequentially their engagement in learning improves here.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• Support with early reading for pupils who join the school with significant weaknesses in reading and gaps in their phonics knowledge is not tailored specifically enough to the phonics they know and the gaps in their phonics knowledge. This limits the impact of this work in helping weaker readers to build reading fluency and confidence. The school should ensure that support for weaker readers is sharply focused on building pupils' phonics knowledge so that they catch up quickly and develop fluency in reading.

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