We are absolutely delighted with their report which recognises the massive effort both teaching and support staff have made at the College over the past 14 months to keep everyone safe and receiving great teaching.

First and foremost, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who responded to the survey from Ofsted. The level of support we received was exceptional with those that responded indicating that,

• 88% of you thought their child felt safe,
• 85% of you thought students are well behaved,
• 89% of you thought their child felt happy at the school,
• 85% of you would recommend our school to another parent or carer.

We were really delighted to receive this feedback which represents the highest scores the school has ever received back from families through the OfSTED survey.

Thank you. Your views are very important to us.

In terms of the inspection itself OfSTED praised the school for:

• Leaders showing resolve and overcoming many challenges in the last year (“Leaders” refers to all leaders across the College including subject leaders, support staff leaders, key stage leaders and pastoral leaders and others who all play a significant part in the operation and development of the College across a wide range of areas)
• Ensuring that all pupils had the technology, materials and support to learn at home
• Leaders at all levels are aware of the importance of curriculum and have invested significant time in training and developing those plans
• Teachers check pupils’ learning and provide feedback regularly
• Leaders have ensured that the needs of pupils with SEND are met. Leaders have a good understanding of the best ways to support these pupils and share this information with teachers as appropriate.
• Leaders have reviewed behaviour policies and Covid -19 routines to ensure that pupils and staff are safe
• Pupils are proud of their school and pleased to be back on site. They are positive and appreciative of the continued support and the opportunity to learn
• Leaders have taken steps to ensure that communication with parents is frequent and informative. As a result, parents are complimentary of the hard work and care of school leaders and teachers.
• Governors care deeply about the school and are taking effective action to assure themselves that all pupils receive an appropriate education in the current circumstances.

The inspection team advised that we should continue to take action on further developing the design of our curriculum and ensuring that knowledge builds over time. We did ask the team of inspectors to recognise that our efforts to do this additional training and development had been hampered by the fact that, since our last inspection, which was just before the first lockdown in February 2020, the school had been dealing with the Covid pandemic and ensuring we kept everyone safe, looked after vulnerable children and developed remote learning.

Unfortunately, the inspection team chose not to take these additional demands, due to the pandemic, into account.

Please rest assured, now that infection rates are reducing and leaders across the College are nearing the end of the huge task of fairly and robustly awarding thousands of final examination grades for our Year 13 and Year 11 students, we will be working hard continuing to further refine our curriculum models for September 2021.

For this type of Ofsted visit we can only achieve an “effective” or “not effective” grade.

I am delighted to say that the inspection team felt leaders at all levels across the College and our Governors were taking “effective” action in the current circumstances.

Thank you once again for your support. It really is very much appreciated.