Smithills School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Smithills School is an accepting environment where pupils typically treat staff, and one another, with respect.

A number of pupils join the school mid-year, including some who have recently arrived in the country. These pupils are warmly welcomed and quickly settle into school life. Most pupils are happy to attend this school.

They typically behave well, upholding the school values in lessons and at social times. Pupils feel confident that staff will help them to resolve any concerns that they report.

The school has increasingly high aspirations for pupils' achievement.

It recognises that, over time, outcomes for some pupils have not been strong. To ...address this, the school has made recent changes to the curriculum to better support pupils' learning. However, many of these changes are in the early stages of implementation.

This means that, due to gaps in knowledge, some older pupils do not achieve as well as they should.

Pupils benefit from a wide array of clubs and activities that enable them to develop new skills and to make new friends. The school ensures that these opportunities are open to all.

For example, pupils are encouraged to take part in musical shows, regardless of their prior experience. The broad range of sporting activities on offer includes plenty of competitive and non-competitive options to encourage as many pupils as possible to participate.

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

School leadership, including at trust level, has recently been through a period of considerable change.

The current board of trustees has strong accountability systems that help them to know the school well. Trustees are providing effective support to assist the school to identify and address the weaknesses in provision that have hindered pupils' achievement in the past. However, it is too early to see the full impact of the school's actions on improving the quality of education for pupils.

The school has recently made changes to increase the overall ambition of the curriculum. This is to ensure that pupils are better prepared for their next steps beyond high school. The school has also made improvements to individual subject curriculums.

This is so that the knowledge that pupils should learn is more clearly defined and organised in an increasingly logical order.

Teachers typically have strong subject knowledge. However, some teachers lack the expertise to design activities that promote pupils' learning effectively enough.

In these subjects, some pupils do not learn new knowledge to the depth required to succeed.

In many subjects, the school's assessment systems are underdeveloped. They are not designed to check whether pupils have learned the knowledge which underpins the curriculum.

This is because, in these subjects, the knowledge that pupils must learn has only recently been defined. Therefore, teachers are sometimes unaware of pupils' misconceptions and any gaps in knowledge that pupils may have. As a result, some pupils do not have secure enough foundations on which to build new knowledge.

The school has rigorous systems to identify pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Skilled staff support most pupils with SEND to access the same curriculum as their peers. Nonetheless, the deficits in the delivery of the curriculum also impact on pupils with SEND.

The school is in the early stages of rolling out a programme to support pupils that need to develop their reading knowledge. This includes some pupils with SEND. Despite this, some pupils struggle to access the curriculum because they have not received the help that they need to improve their reading.

The school has recently implemented changes to the behaviour system, with a stronger focus on promoting positive attitudes to learning. Staff quickly challenge any poor behaviour so that disruption to learning is minimised. As a result, classrooms are calm and purposeful learning environments.

The school has thoughtfully considered the wider knowledge that pupils should learn to support their personal development. Pupils successfully increase their knowledge about a range of topics, including finance, diversity and how to develop healthy relationships. The school has designed a rich and varied careers programme, which helps pupils to make well-informed choices about their futures.

The school is proactive in seeking the views of pupils, parents and carers. It uses this information well to improve policy and practice. For example, the school has acted to offer a greater choice of languages and vocational subjects following feedback from pupils and parents.

Most staff feel happy and proud to work at Smithills School. Leaders at all levels carefully consider the impact of any changes that they make to school systems which may affect the workload and well-being of staff.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• Some of the activities that teachers design do not enable pupils to learn the curriculum as well as they should. This hinders how well some pupils achieve. The school should ensure that teachers know how to design activities that help pupils to learn the intended curriculum.

In many subjects, the school's assessment systems are in development. Consequently, some teachers do not identify the gaps in pupils' knowledge quickly enough. The school should ensure that its assessment systems are designed to check whether pupils have learned the essential knowledge that is defined in the curriculum.

• Some pupils do not receive the support that they require to improve their reading knowledge. Consequently, these pupils cannot access the wider curriculum, leading to underachievement. The school should ensure that it provides swift and effective support that enables these pupils to catch up with their reading knowledge.