Newport school making progress after ‘requires improvement’ Ofsted rating

Burton Borough School was said to require improvement during its last inspection 18 months ago and was the subject of a monitoring visit which took place in April.

Inspector Alex Laney said that since the last inspection there had been a restructure of the school’s leadership which has seen greater significance placed on the quality of the provision for pupils with special educational needs and disability (SEND).

“You have identified the important levers for success in each aspect of your work and are tackling these in the right order,” concluded Mr Laney in his findings.

“This work, and in particular the work you have done to improve the detail of curriculum plans and the provision for pupils with SEND, is beginning to address some of the shortcomings identified at the previous inspection.

“You have made shrewd changes to your leadership team as well as making effective use of support from external agencies, such as the local authority, to raise the profile of SEND across the school.

“Increasingly, teachers now think carefully about the individual needs of pupils, and most teachers use the information they have about pupils well to adapt their teaching to meet these needs.

“This work is beginning to have a positive impact on the experiences of pupils with SEND.”

Mr Laney added that the school had ‘successfully redesigned the curriculum’ which was helping teachers to design lessons that ‘closely align with the intended curriculum’.

The inspector said that the school should take further action to "ensure that all teachers make effective use of the information they receive about pupils with SEND to deliver lessons that meet the needs of these pupils consistently well".

He also found that further action was needed to "ensure that teachers systematically and accurately check if pupils have understood the key knowledge they have been taught and that teachers make good use of assessment information to adapt their teaching where necessary".

The inspector concluded: “You have begun to tackle the weaknesses in assessment identified at the previous inspection.

“However, there is still too much variability in the use of assessment across the school. The structures and mechanisms that teachers use to check on pupils’ progress through the curriculum do not always help to identify if pupils have understood the precise things they have been taught.

“Because of this, teachers are not able to take swift action to rectify gaps in pupils’ learning. This hinders learning.”

Mr Laney complimented the school’s leadership who he said were ‘driven and determined’. He added that they had ‘worked tirelessly’ since the Covid-19 pandemic to ‘restore relationships’ with parents and pupils.

It was highlighted in the report that a new governing body had been installed at the start of the academic year. The school’s governors were described as ‘highly skilled’ and found to have been ‘integral in driving forward improvements at the school’.