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Click the links to view Rossett School’s Ofsted inspection reports:

Letter to parents/carers following the latest Ofsted inspection:

Dear Parents and Carers 

    

You will know that Ofsted recently conducted a Section 5 Inspection of our school, please find below the copy of the latest Ofsted report for the school. The overall grade for the school is 'Requires Improvement' but within this our 'Quality of Education', 'Personal Development' Programme for students, and 'Sixth Form' were graded as 'Good'. The two areas of 'Behaviour and Attitudes' and 'Leadership and Management' were graded as 'Requires Improvement' and it is the latter assessment that determines the overall grading. 

    

We are disappointed with the overall grade for the inspection.  We have however improved in key areas since the last inspection.  Inspectors deemed the Quality of Education we provide to be ‘Good’.  This is the core of our work as a school, and we are delighted that Ofsted recognised the quality of our curriculum that is delivered effectively by our teachers.  A team of six inspectors observed over thirty lessons across the two-day inspection, looked closely at students’ work and reviewed our curriculum plans and lesson resources in great detail.  They found many strengths in our practice and remarked on the school’s broad, balanced, and ambitious curriculum and the fact that students leave Rossett and go on to positive next steps in education, employment, or training. This is a big step forward for the school and validates the huge amount of work by leaders and teachers over the last few years. We have already embarked on our journey to ‘outstanding’, a grade now reserved for a very small number of schools, nationally.     

    

Pleasingly, the personal development opportunities we provide for our students were also recognised as ‘Good’; an improvement from the previous inspection (2019), where Ofsted deemed personal development to ‘require improvement’. Inspectors commented on how the school provides a wealth of opportunities to develop students’ social, moral, spiritual, and cultural awareness so that they can become better citizens.  Inspectors also remarked on the high-quality Personal Development curriculum we teach to all students, and how this aims to build resilience and help students go on to lead healthy, safe, and happy lives. Our next step is to be recognised as an ‘outstanding’ provider in this area.     

    

Our Sixth Form provision retained its previous grade of ‘good’ with inspectors commenting on both the high-quality curriculum offer and strong pastoral care provided by the school.  We are pleased with this, considering the high standards expected under the new inspection framework compared to the one we were last inspected over.  We have taken their views on board and now work to towards ‘outstanding’ Sixth Form provision.     

    

Inspectors deemed the attendance of certain groups of students to be too low.  As a result, we are reviewing our attendance strategy to ensure all students are in school regularly and benefitting from the high-quality education we provide.  We must have your full support as parents and carers to drive up attendance rapidly; as parents have the legal responsibility to ensure regular attendance by their child.  We will be taking a tougher stance on pupil absence and ask that you help us ensure that no child loses out through missing time in school.       

 

 During feedback, we heard about how inspectors found the students at Rossett to be polite, considerate, and well behaved. However, inspectors also identified a small group of students who have not yet bought in to the Rossett values of responsibility, resilience, and reflectiveness.   A year ago (September 2021), Ofsted inspectors wrote that ‘leaders have managed to ensure students have consistently positive attitudes to learning’ and so it was extremely disappointing that the challenge provided by a small number of students has impacted the overall grade for behaviour and attitudes.  We want to reassure you that we are taking robust action with this small group of students so that they do not disrupt the smooth running of the school and quickly learn to make better choices.  We will not tolerate disruptive behaviour around the school site and between lessons and are moving quickly to bring this group of students in line with our expectations.  In addition, we will be reviewing our response to bullying allegations to ensure our highly effective processes are consistently applied. You will have noticed a recent push on uniform.  This is part of a school-wide drive to raise standards and ensure that students know and understand we have the very highest expectations of them. In the coming months we will be revisiting our Behaviour Policy to ensure it supports our aim to establish exemplary behaviour and attitudes.    

    

Some very specific points limited the leadership and management judgement to ‘requires improvement’.  Immediately following the inspection, we reviewed and amended the process of recording Sixth Form absence.  We have also reiterated the correct reporting process for staff members to raise concerns in exceptional circumstances.  We are also reviewing how the school will work with the Governing Body and Trustees to ensure there is effective support for us to improve rapidly in the areas that need our attention.  

    

We will be sharing with you an Ofsted Action Plan in the coming weeks that will document our actions to improve upon these areas.    

    

If you have any immediate questions regarding the Ofsted report, please click on the link here. We will collate and review all responses.  

 

We know that making further progress is a team effort that includes all of us in school together with you as parents and carers. We will be making additional efforts to keep you informed and involved as we work towards further improvement in the weeks to come.    

    

Finally, I wish to thank the staff of Rossett School for their unswerving commitment to the school that has enabled us to improve the Quality of Education and Personal Development.  We will continue to work together as a determined and strong team to rapidly improve the points raised in the report before our next inspection.

 

Yours sincerely 

 

 

J Hesketh

Chair of Governors 

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