Camberwell Park Specialist Support School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils enjoy being at this school because they feel cared for and safe.

This helps them to feel happy. However, they do not succeed academically from their individual starting points.

Pupils experience a curriculum that lacks ambition.

The school has not ensured that the overarching curriculum offer meets the needs and aspirations of all pupils. Pupils, including children in the early years, do not learn the crucial knowledge that they need to prepare them well for the future. The school's expectations of what pupils should and can achieve are not high enough.

Pupils are starting to benefit from the introduction of a new behaviour policy. This is hel...ping them to become increasingly independent. However, some pupils still struggle to regulate their actions and emotions.

Some staff lack the expertise and training that they need to help these pupils to manage their own behaviour.

Pupils experience a broad range of opportunities to support their communication, social and physical development. These include trips to the shops, community walks and a Year 6 residential visit.

Over time, pupils learn how to navigate the outside world with confidence. However, the school's personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education curriculum is underdeveloped. Pupils miss out on learning important life lessons which they need for their future lives.

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

Governors have recently sought external support which has led to interim leadership arrangements. The interim leadership team has a clear understanding of how well the school is performing and what needs to improve. It knows that the quality of education that pupils receive is poor.

This team is beginning to tackle these weaknesses. However, it is still early days and the actions so far have not had enough meaningful impact.

The school's curriculum lacks structure and coherence.

Between classes and across key stages, it is disjointed. Subject curriculums do not set out the content of what pupils should learn and the order in which subject content should be taught. Teachers lack the necessary guidance to know what they should teach.

This means that pupils receive a muddled set of activities which do not help them to develop or learn effectively over time. The school does not have an accurate oversight of what is being taught.

The school's systems to assess pupils' starting points when they join the school provide teachers with some useful information.

While teachers set out the learning goals that they want pupils to achieve, these are often not based on the subject-specific aspects of the curriculum. Consequently, teachers are unclear about what knowledge pupils have of curriculum subjects. The weaknesses in the design and delivery of the curriculum also result in flaws in teachers' assessment methods.

This means that teachers are unclear about which learning pupils need to revisit or what pupils need to learn next.

More recently, the school has prioritised reading. The phonics programme has been strengthened and reintroduced.

Staff have only very recently received up-to-date training to deliver this programme. This means that they now have a clearer understanding of how children in the early years and pupils learn to read. Pupils are starting to benefit from reading books that are matched to the sounds that they know.

With external support, teachers are increasingly gaining confidence in helping pupils to become more confident and fluent readers. However, pupils have few opportunities to read for pleasure. They have limited access to a broad and rich body of texts.

This hinders pupils from developing a love of reading.

All pupils in the school have an education, health and care plan (EHC plan). These are reviewed in a timely manner.

The school identifies and assesses the additional needs of pupils effectively. Staff receive useful information to help them to adapt the delivery of learning to meet pupils' needs. However, this information has had limited impact.

In part, this is due to the considerable changes to staffing in recent times, which has led to varied use of this information. Furthermore, the school has not provided teachers with appropriate training to understand pupils' more complex needs. Staff lack the understanding to shape the delivery of teaching to meet pupils' wide range of learning needs effectively.

This means that some pupils are not supported as well as they should be to access the curriculum.

The school has recently improved its approach to managing pupils' behaviour. Its raised expectations for classroom routines and transitions during the school day are contributing to increasingly calm and well-ordered classrooms.

Additionally, the school's new systems to gather information about pupils' behaviour, and spot patterns, are starting to help reduce behaviour incidents. However, these approaches are new. Some staff do not use these systems consistently well.

As a result, some pupils exhibit challenging behaviour that disrupts the learning of others. Typically, pupils attend school regularly.

The school provides a range of activities to enhance pupils' personal development.

These have included trips to the pantomime, football tournaments with other local special schools and working in the school allotment. Through the curriculum, pupils explore different faiths, cultures and perspectives. They learn about the importance of keeping mentally and physically healthy.

However, much of this learning is not carefully organised to ensure that pupils build on what they know as they mature. Moreover, this learning is informally woven through other subject activities, extra-curricular events and assemblies. Pupils do not have a sufficient understanding of important content from a statutory PSHE curriculum.

Staff appreciate the recent efforts of the interim leadership team to engage with them. They are broadly supportive of the recent changes and the consideration that is given to their workload. However, without the external support arrangements that are in place, the school is fragile.

It does not have the capacity to bring about the necessary improvements.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• The school has not identified the essential information that pupils must learn across the curriculum.

As a result, teachers are unsure what they should teach. This results in pupils completing isolated activities that do not enable them to build a secure body of knowledge over time. Pupils' achievement is weak as a consequence.

The school should ensure that it sets out what must be taught in each subject, and in what order, so that teachers can design learning that helps pupils to gain the knowledge that they need to be successful. ? Weaknesses in the curriculum make it difficult for the teachers to check what pupils are learning. This means that teachers are unsure about what subject content pupils need to revisit and practise.

The school should ensure that teachers are given training and guidance on how to accurately assess and then address gaps and misconceptions in pupils' learning. ? The school has not encouraged pupils to read for pleasure sufficiently well. Consequently, some pupils do not read widely and often to develop a love of reading.

This hinders their learning across the curriculum. The school should make sure that staff routinely encourage pupils to read a rich variety of texts from different authors. ? Some staff have not been supported well to adapt the delivery of the curriculum to meet pupils' different learning needs.

This hinders some pupils from building a secure body of subject-specific knowledge. The school should ensure that all teachers are suitably equipped to ensure that pupils can access the curriculum and learn all that they should. ? Some staff do not support pupils to improve their behaviour to the expected standards.

Some pupils therefore disrupt their own learning and that of their peers. The school should ensure that all staff follow the school's behaviour policy consistently well. The school should support pupils to better manage their own behaviour in school.

• There are no structured curriculums for PSHE, relationships and sex education, or religious education. As a result, pupils miss out on learning important information to support them in their personal development. The school should ensure that the curriculum prepares pupils fully for the future.

• The school is heavily reliant on the recent external support to make the necessary improvements to the quality of pupils' education. The school, including members of the governing body, must ensure that there is appropriate expertise to tackle the shortcomings in the school's provision.

The school may not appoint early career teachers before the next monitoring inspection.

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