Ofsted Inspection Report 2021

Dear Parents and carers,

I am writing to share with you the outcome of the inspection of the school by Ofsted which took place last October.

You will see that the inspection team made the following judgements about the school: –

The judgement on the leadership and management of the school is a holistic reflection of the quality of education provided over the last five years and encompasses governance, senior leadership and subject leadership.

We are very disappointed with some of Ofsted’s judgements but everyone at the school is determined to respond positively. The report makes clear where we are doing well and I am delighted that the behaviour and attitudes of our students was judged to be ‘Good’, as was the personal development of our young people due to the school’s high-quality care, advice and guidance.

The report says,

“Pupils feel happy and safe at The Radclyffe School.”

“They enjoy coming to school to learn with their friends.”

“Pupils are polite and courteous.”

“Recent improvements to the curriculum mean that a greater number of pupils are now learning more than they have in the past.”

“The previous curriculum did not provide pupils with the necessary breadth, depth and ambition to acquire a rich body of knowledge across subjects. Recently appointed senior leaders have taken the right actions to ensure the curriculum is increasingly broad and ambitious.”

“For the most part subject leaders have thought carefully about the order in which to teach the overarching topics in each subject. They are now defining the exact knowledge that pupils must know and remember within these topics.”

“Leaders and staff have raised their expectations of pupils’ behaviour. They have clear systems in place to ensure that pupils behave well.”

As a school we carefully considered our response to the report and submitted an appeal and complaint to Ofsted against the judgements for ‘Quality of Education’ and ‘Leadership & Management’ on the grounds that insufficient consideration was given to the impact of the Covid pandemic on the school’s ability to implement its planned curriculum changes. Unfortunately, our complaint was not upheld. One of the other main reasons that our quality of education was not deemed to be ‘Good’ at this time is the ongoing impact of the old, legacy curriculum provided by the school (before we replaced this in 2019) which is now only being followed by our current Year 11 cohort.

I would like to take the opportunity to reassure parents, carers and students that the school was already undertaking a planned process of further improvement and we are very happy that the inspection team has endorsed the school’s current educational vision and the structure of our current curriculum. My leadership team and I, supported by the governors of the school, have a clear plan to tackle the identified areas for improvement: many important actions have already been successfully implemented and we are very confident that the remaining elements will be completed in the very near future.

We will submit a formal request to Ofsted that the school is re-inspected in the next academic year (2022-23), by which time all year groups in the school will be benefitting from the new curriculum we introduced in 2019.

I thank you for your continued support of the school and I remain very proud of all our staff and the incredible work they do on a daily basis for the benefit of your children. If you have any specific questions regarding the Ofsted report, please do not hesitate to contact me.

You can find a copy of the full report here.

You can also see a copy of the full report online here.

Yours faithfully,

Mr J Cregg
Headteacher