King James’s School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

King James's is a good school. Outcomes for students are outstanding.

Attendance, attainment and behaviour are of a high standard. Some variation in students' progress is being ironed out. As a result, achievement is now good in most subjects and for all groups, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

The improvement in students' progress is recent and yet to be embedded, but is already evident in students' learning. Achievement in the large sixth form is good. For these two reasons, achievement is good rather than outstanding.

Most students and parents or carers are positive about the school. It provides outstanding value for money. The strong and improvi...ng outcomes are the result of much determined and effective work to build on the school's good qualities and address weaknesses.

As a result, students have a very good choice of courses and enriching extra activities. Their progress is carefully monitored and they receive exceptional care, support and guidance. These fine qualities make sure that all groups of students make the most of their opportunities in this vibrant school.

The quality of teaching is generally good. Much teaching is characterised by teachers' use of their strong understanding of their subjects and their students to make lessons purposeful, exciting and illuminating. However, a proportion is no better than satisfactory because it misses some opportunities to maximise students' progress.

This happens when teachers do not closely match the challenge of work to what the student has shown he or she can already do. Some teachers do too much of the talking, leaving students too passive; some do not check students' progress closely enough within the lesson or give feedback which helps students to improve. The school's leaders and managers set high expectations and have a good understanding of how the school can do better.

Their determined work to improve the use of information to evaluate the school, to increase monitoring and to focus improvement-planning has had a good effect. The steps taken have reduced variation between subjects and significantly boosted the progress made by boys. As a result, achievement has improved and is now good.

The school clearly has good capacity to sustain improvement. It is not outstanding because leaders and managers have not used the most stretching benchmarks to compare the school's performance. In consequence, inspection evidence did not support the school's self-evaluation in some respects.

While progress is rigorously and effectively monitored, the monitoring of the quality of some aspects of teaching and assessment has not been highly effective in producing consistently good or better quality.

Information about the school

King James's School is larger than average and, as the only secondary school in Knaresborough, serves both the town and outlying villages. The proportion of students known to be entitled to free school meals is well below average.

Almost all students are White British with a small number from other heritages. The proportion of students with special educational needs and/or disabilities is broadly average; however, the number of those students with a statement of special educational needs is slightly below average. King James's is a specialist school for technology and business and enterprise and a training school.

Inspection grades: 1 is outstanding, 2 is good, 3 is satisfactory and 4 is inadequate Please turn to the glossary for a description of the grades and inspection terms