Quest Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Everything that happens at Quest Academy helps pupils to be ready to learn and to be 'ready for life'. This results in tangible benefits, both personal and academic, for all pupils.

Pupils are very well supported to help develop their self-confidence and self-belief. The pupils spoken to told inspectors how much better they are doing at this school. One pupil summed this up by saying, 'I feel good about the future.'

Parents and carers wholeheartedly agree with this view.

The school rules, be ready, be respectful, be safe, are reinforced daily. Staff model the high expectations that they have for pupils' behaviour.

Pupils are well supported to learn ...to manage their own behaviour. Many pupils are highly motivated by the school's reward system. They aim to reach 'diamond' status on a weekly basis.

Pupils feel safe in school and have trusted adults with whom they can talk. Incidents of bullying do occur from time to time, but leaders deal with them effectively.

All pupils benefit from an extensive range of opportunities to support their personal development.

These include the 'ACE' (adventure, community and enterprise) curriculum and opportunities to showcase their achievements and talents at 'Questival'.

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

Leaders and governors have created a curriculum that is ambitious for all pupils. The curriculum combines academic subjects, personal development and preparation for life beyond school.

Together, these aspects form a coherent and well-constructed programme.

Pupil's individual education, health and care plans provide leaders with a starting point for deciding what and how to teach. Each pupil follows a carefully sequenced and highly personalised plan.

Leaders update and adapt these as pupils' needs develop and change. This approach is right and effective.

Staff nurture individual pupil's interests and talents, while addressing any gaps in their knowledge.

Leaders use available funding well to support personalised learning. This includes access to music and language lessons and the provision of specialist equipment. Leaders also provide support for pupils' sensory needs.

This is helping many pupils to manage their own behaviour better.

From their starting points, pupils achieve well. Pupils talk about what they have learned and can remember.

Leaders assess all aspects of their pupils' learning and development. However, their approach to assessing pupils' progress in many academic subjects does not focus closely enough on what pupils have been taught. This does not help teachers to know what pupils need to learn next.

Teachers provide a positive mix of specialist and non-specialist teaching. Younger pupils enjoy having specialist teachers for some subjects, such as computing. Generally, teachers deliver the curriculum in ways that are meaningful and help pupils to remember the content.

Teachers convey challenging content sensitively, for example when teaching about protected characteristics.

Leaders prioritise the promotion of reading and encourage pupils to read regularly. Lessons in all subjects have a strong focus on developing pupils' vocabulary and comprehension skills.

Over time, leaders have used a range of strategies to teach reading. As a result, there is not a single approach to the teaching of reading currently in use. This, along with an increased number of younger pupils attending school, means that not all pupils are learning to read as well as they could.

Leaders are taking appropriate action to address this, but the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed developments.

Pupils' personal development is at the heart of the curriculum. Over time, this work helps to prepare pupils well for their next stage in education.

This includes appropriate careers advice, guidance and work experience opportunities.

The local advisory board and multi-academy board of trustees are proud of the school and its achievements. They work together constructively to hold leaders to account.

Governors and trustees are knowledgeable about the school. They have a good understanding and oversight of their roles and functions.

Most staff feel well supported by leaders, for example to understand the curriculum and how best to deliver it.

Leaders are mindful of staff workload and involve them in relevant school-wide decisions.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Keeping pupils safe has a very high priority across the school.

Staff know what to do when they have any safeguarding worries about a pupil. They are vigilant and well placed to identify when pupils may need help to keep safe. Leaders follow up all concerns tenaciously.

Staff from safeguarding, behavioural and therapy teams work together well. This is to ensure that pupils are taught how to keep themselves safe, both in practical situations and when online, and to minimise any risk of exploitation.

Leaders complete all relevant checks to ensure that the adults in school are safe to work with pupils.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• As the school has expanded, there are an increasing number of pupils at the early stages of learning to read. However, there is not a consistent or coherent phonics programme in place. Books are not well matched to these pupils' phonics knowledge.

As a result, not all pupils in the early stages of learning to read are making as much progress as they could. While leaders have plans in place to address this, they need to ensure that the new phonics programme, and relevant staff training, are put in place as soon as possible. ? In many academic subjects, the school's current assessment system requires staff to assess pupils' progress against high level outcomes rather than what has been taught in individual lessons or sequences of work.

This means that staff sometimes struggle to identify precisely what pupils need to learn next. Leaders are aware of this mismatch and have begun to devise an assessment system that focuses precisely on what has been taught. Leaders need to ensure that the work to strengthen the assessment system is completed and extended to all subject areas.

Also at this postcode