Wallington High School for Girls

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

Wallington High School provides excellent care, guidance and support for its students. Superb attention is given to students so that they develop a strong sense of self-confidence, become aspirational and have the determination to pursue their goals in life. Students say they feel exceptionally safe.

The school's safeguarding procedures are exemplary. Students' behaviour, including those in the sixth form, is exemplary and they are highly motivated to do well, which has also resulted in high attendance. Students make good progress and achieve high standards at the end of Year 11 and in their AS and A levels.

In 2010, the proportion of high grades students attained at GCSE in many subjects imp...roved on the previous year. The progress students made in English in 2010 fell significantly in comparison to the previous two years; early indications for 2011 are that it is set to improve. In 2010, the progress made by Black African and White British students was not as good as that made by other students.

This has improved in the current year. The school's data indicate that in 2011, no group of students are underachieving. The school promotion of equal opportunities is exemplary.

The highly effective care, guidance and support provided by the school enables students with special educational needs and/or disabilities, especially those students who require intensive school intervention, to achieve as well as their peers. Teaching is not yet of the highest standard to enable students to make the best progress. Although much teaching is good, there is a significant proportion which is satisfactory.

Inspectors observed only a few outstanding lessons. In the best lessons, the effective planning enabled teachers to inject good pace and variety into lesson activities; this resulted in students learning well. In the weaker lessons, although teachers had a range of assessment information available, in a few lessons they did not use the information to plan appropriately for the differing needs of the students in the class, particularly the most able.

In some lessons, teachers set tasks that were not appropriately pitched to the right level or which directed students too closely so that they did not learn independently. These lessons often lacked challenging tasks and teachers talked for long periods of time. Often in these lessons, teachers did not check appropriately to identify whether students had understood the learning objectives; consequently, they were unable to move students on quickly enough through tasks so that they were able to make good progress.

The excellent partnerships and the good curriculum have contributed well to maintaining outstanding students' outcomes. The wide range of business, engineering and language partnerships have enabled students to gain valuable work experience. Engineering partnerships have enabled the school to become the lead partner in the development of the engineering diploma.

The curriculum provides well for students' needs; however, the provision of information and communication technology (ICT) is piecemeal. Leaders do not have a firm understanding of how ICT is being used across the school. This has inhibited students from developing their necessary skills in this subject.

The headteacher and her senior leadership team work effectively together to communicate a vision of improving achievement. Areas of weakness are being tackled and key actions have been implemented to improve students' progress in English. The school's work with parents and carers has been highly effective.

Many effective strategies have been introduced since the last inspection to increase the contribution made by parents and carers; for example, parents and carers took part in revising the school's vision, making changes to the curriculum and in planning for the new sports development. One parent commented that '..

worthy of note is the effective channels of communication between school and parent/carers'. Leaders have devised good plans and developed sound systems to improve teaching and learning. These good initiatives are increasing the proportion of good lessons in the school.

These actions, along with the accurate self-evaluation, enable the school to demonstrate a good capacity to improve further. However, the school is aware that a more focused approach is required to improve the consistency of some subject leaders' assessment of the quality of teaching and learning so they can increase the proportion of outstanding lessons.

Information about the school

Wallington High School for Girls is a larger than average girls' school.

The school gained specialist engineering college status in 2004 and a second specialist subject of languages in 2009. Over half of the student population are from minority ethnic backgrounds; the largest proportion are of British Indian heritage. Over twice the national average number of students speak English as an additional language.

There are fewer than average students with special educational needs and/or disabilities. There are no students with a statement of special educational needs and/or disabilities. The proportion of students known to be eligible for free school meals is significantly below the national average.