Beacon Hill Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Key findings

Beacon Hill is outstanding school. Its excellent practices reflect the very high aspirations staff have for pupils' achievement.

The personalised curriculum offered ensures that pupils' care needs are fully addressed alongside very high quality specialist teaching. The sixth form is outstanding and prepares students for life when they leave school very effectively. Pupils achieve extremely well in a wide range of subjects and aspects of their development.

Achievements range from those with the most profound difficulties being able to shift their gaze to follow a light, to the pupils in the school's gifted and talented group reading a selection of books. Teaching is of a very high standard thro...ughout the school. Teachers plan lessons very carefully to enable all pupils to make progress from their different starting points.

Accurate and robust assessment of pupils' achievements enables staff to plot their progress and be in a position to challenge them appropriately to achieve even more. Pupils make their own unique contribution to the school's excellent safe and thriving learning environment through their positive engagement with staff. They thoroughly enjoy being in school and their behaviour in and out of class is excellent.

Staff ensure that pupils are safe at all times but are equally highly proficient at being able to step back to encourage pupils to be as independent as possible. Pupils' spiritual development is very strongly promoted, as shown by the excellent care and support given to pupils to help them understand and celebrate the life of a recently deceased fellow pupil. The management of the school's performance management is extremely rigorous and has seen the development of highly specialised skills across the entire staff team.

Senior leaders have successfully pursued their goal of excellence in teaching through rigorous monitoring, coaching and extensive training opportunities. The plans for the move to academy status are well under way, although currently the number of established partnerships is small.

Information about the school

Beacon Hill is a smaller than average special school.

It caters for pupils with severe and profound multiple learning difficulties. Many pupils have significant medical conditions, some of which are life limiting. The school has two sites, the main school site for pupils aged 3 to 16 and a new purpose-built site for its sixth form.

The proportion of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals is close to the national average. Only a very small number of pupils admitted are in the care of a local authority. The school has specialist status for sensory and physical needs.

It has achieved many awards for its work, the most recent being to be accredited as one of only 11 schools to receive a European 'Move' citation, a specialist physical programme for pupils with significant physical difficulties. The school opened seven years ago after the merger of two former special schools. It is due to become an academy from September 1, 2012.

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