St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is an outstanding school.

The leadership of the inspirational headteacher and her senior team is outstanding. This has successfully enabled the school to continue to provide an excellent standard of education to its diverse student community. Systems to monitor and improve the quality of teaching are well established, comprehensive and highly effective.

Staff are encouraged to develop leadership roles, including working with, and helping to improve, other local schools. All leaders contribute extremely well to improving teaching and learning. Church school status makes an important and distinctive contribution to the school's exceptionally positive values... and beliefs.

Leaders and the highly effective governing body ensure that students' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development are given the highest possible priority. Students' behaviour, both within classrooms and around the school site, is extremely impressive. This reflects their high level of maturity and social responsibility.

Attitudes to learning are overwhelmingly positive; students are appreciative of staff's efforts to help them to be successful at school. Students report that they feel exceptionally safe. They are highly knowledgeable about a wide range of safety-related social issues.

Teaching is consistently of very high quality. Teachers routinely plan lessons that provide suitable challenge for students of all abilities. Teachers' expectations of students are typically very high.

Teaching is strong in all subjects, including in English and in mathematics. All students quickly gain the literacy and numeracy skills which they need to enable them to achieve extremely well across the curriculum. Students achieve exceptionally well in a range of GCSE subjects.

The proportion gaining five good GCSEs, including English and mathematics, has remained well above the national average since the previous inspection. Disabled students and those who have special educational needs are very well looked after and achieve as well as their peers in school. Rates of progress for all groups of students, including those who are disadvantaged, are rapidly increasing across both Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4.

The outstanding sixth form makes an excellent contribution to St Mary Redcliffe. As in the rest of the school, students benefit from consistently high quality teaching. Students in the sixth form have an exemplary attitude to their studies and reach high academic standards.

Almost all students continue into Year 13 from Year 12, indicating high levels of achievement and students' satisfaction with their course choices.

Information about this school

St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School is much larger than most secondary schools. The school has a very large sixth form, which is continuing to increase in size.

An increasing proportion of its students joins the sixth form having attended other schools up to the age of 16. These students now make up the majority of those on roll in Year 12. The proportion of disabled students and those who have special educational needs in the school as a whole is close to the national average.

The proportion of disadvantaged students for whom the school receives the pupil premium is below average, but increasing. This is additional government funding for those students known to be eligible for free school meals and those who are looked after by the local authority. About two thirds of students are of White British heritage.

The remaining one third of students on roll is made up of a wide range of minority ethnic groups. A very small number of students in Years 10 and 11 follow vocational courses at The Park for part of their education. The achievement of these students is not reported in detail to avoid identifying individuals.

The school meets the government's floor targets, which set the minimum expectations for students' attainment and progress. The headteacher is a national leader of education. She provides extensive support to other schools within the Bristol area.

Ten staff at the school are specialist leaders of education, also working to improve provision in other local schools. St Mary Redcliffe has Teaching School status. Among other enterprises, this involves responsibility for initial teacher training.