Leeds City Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is a good school Exceptional leadership from the highly skilled senior leadership team has improved all aspects of the school since the last inspection.

The school's culture is now inclusive and aspirational. Pupils develop the resilience needed to rise to the challenges set by staff. The school has been transformed and its overall effectiveness improved.

Governance is a noteworthy strength of the school. Governors provide robust challenge and support to leaders and make a significant contribution to the school's continuing improvement. Teaching is good.

Leaders have effectively addressed previous weaknesses in teaching. As a result, most pupils ...in the school now make good progress from their starting points across a range of subjects. Strong support is in place for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and this helps them to make good progress from their starting points.

Leaders have taken successful action to improve the progress made by disadvantaged pupils. As a result, the gap in progress made between this group of pupils and other pupils nationally is diminishing. Strong relationships between teachers and pupils ensure that most pupils actively use lesson time to reflect on their own learning.

Pupils' personal development, behaviour and welfare are good. Pupils conduct themselves very well in lessons and around the school. They are confident, polite and courteous to one another.

Most pupils show positive attitudes to learning. The curriculum is effective and provides very good opportunities for pupils' academic and personal development. Pupils are well prepared for life in modern Britain.

They develop their strong spiritual, moral, social and cultural understanding through assemblies and within their lessons. Leaders have improved pupils' behaviour since the last inspection. Fixed-term exclusions have significantly reduced since the last inspection.

However, not all staff apply the positive rewards strategy of the school consistently. The rate of fixed-term exclusions of pupils with SEND, although reduced, remains higher than that of their peers. Overall, pupils' attendance has improved and is in line with the national average.

However, despite the hard work of leaders and the attendance team, pupils with SEND remain more likely to be absent than their peers. A small amount of variability remains in the quality of teaching, learning and assessment in some subjects. This leads to an element of unevenness in the progress of some pupils.

Information about this school

Leeds City Academy is much smaller than the average-sized secondary school. The school converted to an academy in September 2014 and joined the White Rose Academies Trust. The principal has been in place since March 2019.

The work of the trust is overseen by a board of trustees. Some responsibilities are delegated to the local accountability board. The trust supports three secondary schools.

Most pupils are from a wide range of minority ethnic backgrounds. The proportion of pupils who speak English as an additional language is significantly higher than the national average, with 40 different home languages being spoken at the school. The proportion of pupils entering or leaving the school other than at the usual times is exceptionally high due to the high mobility of families in and out of the area.

A significant proportion of pupils are new to English. The proportion of pupils known to be eligible for pupil premium funding is significantly higher than the national average. Half the pupils are supported through this additional funding.

The proportion of pupils with SEND is well above the national average. The proportion of pupils who have an education, health and care plan is below the national average. The school currently uses Leeds City College, Stephen Longfellow Academy and Pennington Centre as alternative providers of education for a very small number of pupils.