Queen’s Park High School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils, and students in the sixth form, enjoy the calm and considerate culture at Queen's Park High School.

They appreciate the positive relationships that they have with staff. This helps them to feel safe.

Staff have high expectations for what pupils should achieve.

In the main, pupils are supported well to realise these expectations. Pupils typically achieve well.

Pupils usually treat each other with kindness and respect.

Through their conduct, they demonstrate sensible attitudes and age-appropriate maturity. Occasionally, the experiences of some pupils are interrupted by the poorer behaviour of a small number of pupils. Staff manage such... incidents with fairness and consistency.

Pupils appreciate what staff do to get to know them. This helps them to feel included in the wider life of the school. For example, many sixth form students participate in the National Citizenship Scheme and the schools 'Community Spirit Programme'.

This helps them to develop their awareness of leadership and citizenship. Many younger pupils appreciate the opportunities that they get to broaden their interests or to make a positive contribution to their locality, through clubs, competitions or the varied opportunities to raise money for charities.

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

The school, including members of the local governing body (LGB) and the trust, accurately understand what the school does well and where it could improve.

The school has taken effective action to sustain and enhance the education and wider opportunities that pupils have received in recent years.

Pupils benefit from a suitably broad and ambitious curriculum that supports their academic and vocational interests. Pupils are well prepared to embark on positive and meaningful next steps in education, employment or training.

Teachers have secure subject knowledge. They use it effectively to introduce and explain subject content. Often, teachers provide pupils with suitably demanding activities to use and apply the knowledge that they are learning.

Most pupils tackle these tasks with confidence. This helps them to remember the content that they have been taught. In a minority of places, some teachers do not provide pupils with work that is well-matched to their starting points.

This means that a minority of pupils, including some of those who are disadvantaged, do not achieve as well as they could.

Teachers' checks on learning help to identify what pupils can or cannot do. Mostly, these checks help teachers to accurately identify gaps in pupils' knowledge.

This ensures that teachers make appropriate decisions about what pupils should learn next. However, some teachers do not use information from these checks as well as they could. In these places, teachers miss opportunities to help pupils, including some of those who are disadvantaged, to address gaps in their knowledge.

The school ensures accurate identification of the needs of pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Teachers provide effective support so that these pupils overcome barriers to learning and achieve well.

The school proactively identifies pupils who have significant gaps in their reading knowledge.

These pupils benefit from appropriately targeted support. This helps them to strengthen their knowledge of phonics and develop their reading fluency and comprehension skills.

The majority of pupils in Years 7 to 11 achieve well.

This is also true for students in the sixth form, due to the school's high aspirations for all pupils, including those with lower-than-average starting points. Although the 2024, published outcomes indicated that students' attainment at the end of Year 13 was lower than the national average, current students in the sixth form are developing their knowledge effectively from their starting points.

Pupils usually demonstrate positive attitudes in lessons.

This helps them learn well and without distraction. The school has high expectations for pupils' attendance. It ensures a timely response to pupils' absence.

The school's collaborative work with parents, carers and wider agencies has secured steady improvements to pupils' rates of attendance over recent years. Consequently, most pupils attend regularly. That said, a minority of pupils still struggle to attend school as often as they could.

The school provides comprehensive and age-appropriate opportunities for pupils' personal, social, health and economic education. Suitably trained staff help pupils to learn about their responsibilities as a citizen, healthy relationships and how to look after their health. Pupils benefit from the school's careers education programme.

This is carefully linked to wide range of other opportunities that prepare pupils for the choices that they will make in their education or future careers.

The school, including trust leaders and members of the LGB are clear about their roles and responsibilities. They work well together to fulfil their statutory duties.

They ensure that a culture of aspiration, collaboration and support is experienced by staff. The school's proactive consideration of staff's workload and well-being ensures that staff feel well equipped to undertake their roles.

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 make effective enough use of their checks on pupils' learning to identify what knowledge pupils have gained. As a result, some teachers are not fully informed about what pupils are ready to learn next. The school should ensure that teachers check what knowledge pupils have learned and identify and address gaps in pupils' knowledge.

• At times, teachers do not select learning activities that are well matched to pupils starting points. This means that some pupils are not sufficiently challenged by the work that they are given. The school should ensure that teachers select and use activities in lessons that are appropriately ambitious for pupils.

• A minority of pupils, including some of those who disadvantaged, are persistently absent from school. These pupils miss out on the education that they need to progress through the curriculum as well as they should. The school should refine and enhance its arrangements to support and challenge those pupils who are persistently absent from school.

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