Gosden House School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

Gosden House is an outstanding school. Students achieve exceptionally well.

They grow in confidence and self-belief and their behaviour, attitudes and manners are exemplary. Students thoroughly enjoy school and want to do their best and, as result, they make excellent progress. Teaching and learning are excellent.

Staff have high expectations and challenge students of different abilities, including those with the most complex needs. The school has been extremely successful in developing its staff to ensure their expertise matches the changing needs of the school population. The excellent management of teaching and learning provides targeted training for staff so that there is continual improv...ement of classroom practice.

Planning is carefully tailored to provide exciting experiences for students and makes best use of the skills of teaching assistants and therapists so that there is a seamless approach. The innovative curriculum with exceptionally strong provision in the visual and expressive arts and sport ensures that students are highly motivated. The links with the Globe Theatre and other schools support this work extremely well.

The school's specialism is used very effectively for the benefit of all students, enabling all groups of pupils, whatever their needs, to make excellent progress. Personal development is a cornerstone of the provision and underpinning everything is the high quality of care, guidance and support for students. This is exemplified in the outstanding boarding provision that makes an invaluable contribution to all aspects of students' development.

The quality of education is as strong in the Early Years Foundation Stage as in other year groups. The school is led with passion and commitment by the headteacher, who has a very clear vision about future developments. The outstanding leadership by the senior team has ensured highly effective management at all levels of the school.

All staff see their management roles as contributing to the school's success and display, along with the students, a strong belief that it takes 'many hearts to make a school'. Outstanding governance includes key contributions by governors towards the school's strategic development and in ensuring it provides excellent value for money. The school has recently gained specialist school status for cognition and learning.

It is a leader in this field, with highly effective use of staff's skills to ensure students' needs are met. It has developed very rigorous and robust systems to track students' progress and set them challenging targets. It makes very effective use of this information to intervene if students are not doing quite as well as they might and to guide school improvement planning.

However, it does not use the data about students' progress to the best advantage to show governors, parents and carers, and other stakeholders how well the school is performing overall. The school has recognised this as an improvement priority. The rigour of its self-evaluation and the excellent monitoring procedures underpinning all aspects of school life ensure that a pattern of continual improvement is well established.

The school makes very effective use of its strong links with others, including parents and carers, to support its development and, with the drive and enthusiasm of its staff, this means that it is extremely well placed to improve further.

Information about the school

Gosden House School caters for students with a wide range of learning difficulties ranging from moderate to severe. The complexity of students' needs has increased in recent years.

Many have associated speech, language and communication difficulties and a minority are on the autistic spectrum. All have a statement of special educational needs or are being assessed for one. The school has a mixed primary department and an all-girls secondary department.

The school provides boarding provision for up to 38 boarders on a rolling programme. As part of the school's outreach work, pupils from mainstream schools attend lessons on a sessional basis and some Gosden students attend mainstream schools. The overwhelming majority of students are from White British backgrounds and very few speak English as an additional language.

Children in the Early Years Foundation Stage are taught in the Reception class. The school has a number of awards, including the International School award and Healthy Schools status. It is a Rights Respecting School and it gained specialist status for Cognition and Learning in September 2010.