The Coppice School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Outcome

The Coppice School continues to be a good school.

What is it like to attend this school?

This is a warm and caring school that prides itself on providing a family atmosphere for its pupils.

Pupils are welcomed into the school as their 'second home'. This helps pupils to settle in well and to be happy at school.

The school has high expectations for its pupils, including for their achievement.

All pupils who attend the school have special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). They receive exceptional support and care from highly trained staff. Staff have a detailed understanding of pupils' needs.

Pupils are enthused about the learning opportunities ...that they receive. They live up to the school's ethos of 'learn, enjoy and achieve'.

Pupils behave well in lessons and around school.

They treat each other and staff with care. As a result, there is a calm and purposeful atmosphere. Pupils feel safe at the school.

They understand that staff would help them to resolve any concerns that they may have.

Pupils enjoy a range of extra-curricular activities, such as disco and boccia clubs. They relish the opportunity to learn about the world around them.

Pupils benefit from a wealth of trips and visits, both in their local community and beyond.

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

The school has established a detailed and well-structured curriculum which is ambitious. This sets out the essential knowledge and skills to be taught across the school.

Teachers adapt learning activities well so that regardless of pupils' different needs, they have the support that they need to learn alongside their classmates. This helps pupils across the school to achieve well.

Teachers' subject knowledge is strong.

This helps them to deliver the curriculum effectively. Their careful choice of learning activities enables pupils to become resilient and confident learners. Students in the sixth form follow carefully designed programmes to support their independence both in learning and day-to-day living.

This prepares them well for their next steps.

In many subjects, teachers routinely check pupils' learning. This means that teachers identify and address any misconceptions or gaps in pupils' understanding quickly.

As a result, in most subjects, pupils have the prior knowledge needed to grasp new learning. However, in a few subjects, teachers do not have the assessment information that they need to ensure that pupils revisit missed or forgotten knowledge. This hinders how well some pupils learn in a few subjects.

The school identifies and responds to any changes in pupils' needs. It works well with parents and carers and external professionals to design useful support. The school works purposefully with a range of specialists, such as occupational therapists and speech and language therapists.

This helps to ensure that pupils' educational, health and care needs are met effectively.

The school prioritises the development of pupils' communication and early reading skills from the early years. Staff support pupils to express their needs and ideas, for example through visual and pictorial systems.

Staff are highly skilled in encouraging those pupils with the most complex needs to experience and respond to the sensory world around them. For example, staff ensure that these pupils encounter a different smell, touch and sound each day of the week. The school ensures that those pupils who are ready to learn to read follow an appropriate phonics programme.

Staff are well trained to support these pupils so that they build their phonics knowledge over time.

Pupils are happy, polite and welcoming. Their behaviour in class and around the school is consistently respectful.

Pupils develop positive attitudes to learning that enable them to be successful in school.

Pupils' attendance is a high priority for the school. It ensures that any absences are followed up swiftly.

Where appropriate, effective action is taken to ensure that pupils attend school as often as possible. The school provides families with timely help and guidance to support the attendance and welfare of their children.

The school provides a range of opportunities for pupils' wider development.

These have been carefully designed to take account of pupils' needs. For example, pupils meet representatives from the fire, police and health services. This enables pupils to understand the roles of these different public services.

Older pupils access well-considered opportunities that improve their understanding of the world of work. For example, pupils work in the school's garden centre, dog-grooming salon and Christmas market. As appropriate, some sixth-form students move on successfully to college.

The school has fostered a strong and positive culture among staff. It provides extensive opportunities for training and development to help staff to do their jobs well. The school carefully considers the impact of any decisions on staff's workload.

Staff value the high level of support that they receive.

Governors know the school well. They have a clear and accurate understanding of the curriculum that pupils receive.

This enables them to provide effective support and challenge to leaders to continually improve the quality of education.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• In a small number of subjects, the school's strategies for checking how well pupils are learning are underdeveloped.

This means that teachers do not always know where there are gaps in pupils' knowledge. The school should refine its assessment systems so that gaps in pupils' knowledge are identified accurately and teachers can design learning activities so that these gaps are addressed effectively.

Background

When we have judged a school to be good, we will then normally go into the school about once every four years to confirm that the school remains good.

This is called an ungraded inspection, and it is carried out under section 8 of the Education Act 2005. We do not give graded judgements on an ungraded inspection. However, if we find evidence that a school would now receive a higher or lower grade, then the next inspection will be a graded inspection, which is carried out under section 5 of the Act.

Usually this is within one to two years of the date of the ungraded inspection. If we have serious concerns about safeguarding, behaviour or the quality of education, we will deem the ungraded inspection a graded inspection immediately.

This is the second ungraded inspection since we judged the school to be good in November 2014.