Winterton Community Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Winterton Community Academy is a friendly and caring school. Staff are committed to providing an inclusive school experience for all.

The school's established values of hard work, positivity and respect have been recently extended to include community, diversity and ambition. These values are understood by all. The relationships between teachers and pupils are positive, creating a feeling of unity throughout the school.

Pupils feel safe, and they know they can approach staff if they have any concerns. Pupils are confident and able to express their thoughts and opinions. Staff want the pupils to succeed and expand their knowledge of the world.

The atmosphere i...n the school is calm, and pupils behave well during lessons and while socialising. Staff and pupils understand the school's behaviour expectations. Incidents of poor behaviour are low.

In lessons, there is very little low-level disruption.

Parents and carers praise the school for its supportive environment. They appreciate the warm welcome new pupils receive and the regular communications with parents.

As a result, pupils quickly settle into life at the school.

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

In many subjects, the curriculum has undergone recent changes. There is a significant number of new leaders in the school.

The school has thought carefully about what the pupils will learn and the order of teaching. It identified reading as a barrier for some pupils, and the curriculum includes opportunities for new vocabulary to be taught at the start of topics. Further support for readers is planned.

Teachers have a deep understanding of the subjects they teach. They use questioning to check pupils' understanding. In some subjects, pupils learn well.

Teachers design activities that enable them to build up their knowledge gradually, applying separate ideas to more complex concepts. In other subjects, the curriculum is not taught as effectively. The activities that teachers design do not always support pupils to learn the important knowledge, or to produce high-quality work.

Leaders are at the early stages of addressing this by providing support.

The school carefully identifies pupils' individual needs and supports pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) well. Staff understand pupils' needs and provide the extra help necessary for them to access the curriculum.

Some pupils receive extra help in 'The Junction' and 'The Hub', where specialist teachers adjust the curriculum to support pupils' development.

Pupils understand the school's high expectations for their behaviour. They build strong relationships with adults and other pupils.

In social situations, pupils show confidence, care for others and are polite and respectful to each other and to staff. Pupils receive high-quality pastoral support. The school provides effective support for pupils who struggle to meet the school's behaviour expectations.

The school's curriculum for personal, social and health education is well considered. Pupils learn how to keep safe online and in the community. They learn about healthy lifestyles and relationships, and different religions and cultures.

Most pupils learn about the importance of showing respect and being tolerant to others who may have backgrounds different to their own, though some pupils had limited recall of this important knowledge. Older pupils are well informed about careers and their options. All pupils have opportunities to engage with the world of work.

Staff are proud to work at the school. They appreciate how leaders take account of their workload and well-being. A significant number of leaders, including governors, have been recently appointed.

They are being provided with appropriate support to enable them to establish an accurate view of the school and to develop the skills and processes to enable improvement. The school's processes for checking how well things are working are not as well developed as they could be. They do not provide senior leaders or governors with the information they need to have a clear oversight of the actions needed to support school improvement as effectively as possible.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• Senior leaders, and those responsible for governance, do not always have a close enough oversight of work to assess and improve the school's quality of education. It is not always clear what the school is trying to improve, how this will be achieved or whether it is working.

The school must ensure that actions to improve the curriculum are thought through sufficiently well. Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that the school's actions to improve the quality of education are effective. The curriculum is not implemented effectively in all subjects.

Sometimes, teachers design work and activities which do not help pupils to learn the important knowledge securely enough. As a result, not all pupils learn as well as they could. The school should ensure that teachers are supported to deliver the curriculum effectively so that pupils learn and achieve well in all subjects.