Kingswode Hoe School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is a good school. Good leadership and management, with effective support from governors, have ensured that pupils make good progress and that the quality of teaching is good.

The highly effective senior leadership team has instilled the confidence of parents and created a strong commitment among staff to drive improvement forwards. Leaders are ensuring that pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is promoted well within the new and developing curriculum. They are also ensuring that the new arrangements for assessment and its use are developing well.

The impact of teaching on the learning and progress of all groups of pupils over time is ...good, with some examples of outstanding teaching. Teachers plan interesting activities to motivate pupils and build their confidence as learners. They ensure that pupils systematically acquire and apply the basics skills of communication, literacy and numeracy well.

Teachers and teaching assistants have very good relationships with pupils and manage their behaviour consistently well. Pupils' behaviour is good and the school's efforts to ensure that pupils are safe are good. Attendance is above average, reflecting pupils' good attitudes to learning.

Pupils across the school make good progress in communication, literacy and numeracy, and in personal social and health education and citizenship. Some make outstanding progress from their starting points when they join the school. Pupils at Key Stage 4 make good progress towards their examination courses and are well prepared for the next stage of their lives.

The school has made good improvement since the last inspection. This has led to an increase in the proportion of good and better teaching, and ensured that all groups of pupils are making good progress. It is not yet an outstanding school because : Not enough teaching is outstanding.

Pupils do not always know how to improve their work when their books are marked. Pupils' thinking is not always extended sufficiently so that they deepen their knowledge and understanding and develop new skills quickly. Subject leaders have not yet fully implemented new arrangements for assessment across their subjects.

Subject leaders are not consistently checking that teachers are using assessment information to extend pupils' learning within their subjects.

Information about this school

Kingswode Hoe caters for pupils with moderate learning difficulties and additional complex learning needs. Although registered for pupils aged five to 16 years, the school has not admitted any pupils to the Early Years Foundation Stage or to Key Stage 1 for the past eight years.

Therefore, the Early Years Foundation Stage was not inspected. All pupils have a statement of special educational needs arising from their moderate learning difficulties. The large majority also have one or more additional learning difficulties identified in their statements, such as autistic spectrum disorder, behavioural emotional and social difficulties, or speech language and communication needs.

The proportion of pupils for whom the school receives pupil premium funding is above average. This is additional funding for pupils entitled to free school meals, those who are looked after by the local authority or from where one member of their family is serving in the armed forces. The vast majority of pupils are White British and very few speak English as an additional language.

There are almost four times as many boys as girls in the school. No pupils attend alternative provision as part of their education. Since the last inspection two new assistant headteachers, a behaviour support worker and two specialist higher learning teaching assistants have been appointed.

The school hosts students on initial teaching training as part of the Colchester Teaching Alliance. The school is also a member of the Essex Special School Educational Trust with other Essex special schools. There has been a significant increase in the proportion of pupils with additional behavioural emotional and social difficulties referred to the school.