Flegg High Ormiston Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils feel safe at school and are generally happy.

They know who the safeguarding team are and trust adults to follow up any worries. Pupils appreciate things like counselling and the holiday helpline phone number, which supports mental health and well-being. The school and trust make regular checks to make sure the safety and well-being needs of pupils are met.

Behaviour has improved significantly since the previous inspection. Pupils now behave well. They are generally polite and want to learn.

Where pupils do make a wrong choice, this is dealt with calmly through reflection. This enables pupils to understand the issue and rectify it. Pupils are attending ...increasingly well.

This is because the school diligently follows up absences and promotes good attendance.

There are increasingly high expectations for pupils' achievements. The trust has taken decisive action to improve how well these are realised.

Although the school's actions are bearing fruit, the quality of education pupils receive is not of a consistently high enough standard.

Pupils appreciate the wide range of activities, trips and clubs that are open to all. They particularly value that the leadership is involving their voice so extensively in the changes being made to the school.

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

The school ensures that pupils access a broad curriculum. The school uses the trust subject curriculums, which are ambitious. These set out clearly how pupils build important knowledge.

For example, in English, understanding of important themes such as comedy and tragedy are built through reading a wide range of appropriate texts. Sometimes, teachers do not use assessment well enough to check what pupils know or the quality of work they produce. They also do not consistently promote opportunities to think through and discuss the subject matter being taught.

This means that pupils do not always expand or deepen their thinking as well as they should. The school and trust are working to improve this by providing training support from expert staff.

Literature and books are a theme of the curriculum.

Staff use these to develop pupils reading comprehension effectively. Pupils also have opportunities to read during form time and access the library. However, a general love of reading for pleasure is not widespread.

Pupils, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), do get some targeted support where they have barriers to being able to read fluently but this is not always comprehensive or precise enough.

Pupils with SEND are included and supported to access the curriculum because teachers identify their key needs and take account of them. The school has recently revised and improved SEND systems and processes.

However, because this work is relatively recent, staff do not always provide adjustments to learning that are matched precisely enough to pupils' needs. This means that they do not always achieve as well as they might.The school has made rapid progress with improving behaviour.

Staff and pupils are clear on expectations and positive relationships exist across the school. Pupils talk and chat pleasantly at lunch and enjoy the variety of clubs that are on offer such as football on the new artificial pitch. Although not high, attendance is improving.

The school prioritises good attendance. It carefully tracks each absence and does all it can to enable pupils to get back into school.

Personal development is promoted well including through a comprehensive programme of personal, health, social and economic (PSHE) education.

There are a wide range of enrichment opportunities. These include ski trips, The Duke of Edinburgh's Award, coaching with competitive sports teams and trips such as the debating trip to county hall. There are a range of pupil leadership opportunities, such as house and sports captains.

Pupils get comprehensive careers guidance across the school, including post-16 fairs and work experience. This means that pupils are able to make well-informed choices about their next steps.

The school faced a period of leadership turbulence.

The trust identified this and put in place suitable plans to address it. This included the establishment of a team of educational experts, who formed an interim advisory board. This replaced the local governing body.

Further to this, the school has been partnered with a high-performing school. The principal of this school has taken on the leadership of the school. Leaders' actions are helping to stabilise and improve the school.

Staff feel that they are being consulted with and are part of the improvement journey. This is supporting their well-being and workload.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• Sometimes teachers do not use assessment well enough. As a result, misconceptions are not always identified thoroughly, or where work is not of high enough standard, this is not always addressed as well as it should be. The school should ensure that teachers use assessment diligently to identify misconceptions and pick up and address any work that is not of a high enough standard.

• Sometimes the pedagogical choices teachers make do not promote the opportunities pupils need to discuss the subject matter being taught. This means that some pupils do not always deepen their understanding or expand their thinking well enough. The school needs to ensure that teachers make pedagogical choices that engage pupils with discussion and give them the opportunities they need to deepen and expand their thinking.

• Staff do not always cater precisely enough for the needs of pupils with SEND. This means that although pupils with SEND are supported to access the curriculum, they would achieve more consistently well if staff were more precise in the adaptations they made for pupils' needs. The school should ensure that staff regularly review and are precise in how they cater for the needs of pupils with SEND so that they are supported to achieve as well as possible.