Sutton Tuition and Reintegration Service Ofsted Report

Full report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Secure greater consistency in the level of challenge that pupils are given in their work, particularly the most able pupils, by ensuring that:

lessons provide those pupils who are ready to move on in their learning with opportunities to stretch and deepen their knowledge, skills and understanding questions encourage pupils to think more deeply about their learning pupils’ independent learning skills are promoted regularly the progress that most-able pupils make is checked as thoroughly as that of other groups of pupils.

Inspection judgements

Effectiveness of leadership and management Outstanding

• The new headteacher appreciates the complex and challenging context of the school because she was previously the deputy headteacher. She is very well supported by a dedicated and experienced team of relatively new senior leaders. These leaders know the school equally as well as they too have held either leadership or teaching positions in the school prior to their new appointments.
• Leaders, including middle leaders, work exceptionally well together. All staff are highly motivated and have the right level of expertise and talent to make sure pupils re-engage in their learning quickly and begin to achieve what they are capable of.
• Staff morale is high. Team work is a considerable strength of the school. Staff benefit from a wide range of professional development activities and training linked to individual and school priorities.
• Middle leaders support new teachers, as well as the small minority of staff who may need additional support and guidance, through coaching and mentoring. As a result, the quality of teaching is consistently strong, and is securing successful outcomes for pupils.
• Leaders are systematic in their approach to checking every aspect of the school’s performance. They know precisely what they need to work on next, and plan effectively for further improvements. Staff assess pupils’ personal development well. Leaders know that this needs to be replicated to provide further insight into pupils’ academic abilities. This is particularly so for those pupils who find learning difficult, so that personalised interventions can be put in place more swiftly.
• There is effective partnership work with mainstream schools. Prior assessments and initial checks when pupils enter the centre provide a profile of pupils’ academic and emotional and social needs. Regular analysis of pupils’ progress, including progress meetings and discussions with pupils, maintains high levels of achievement.
• Leaders assess the progress that individual pupils make, and that of almost all key groups. Leaders do not check the progress that the most able pupils make. Therefore, despite monitoring the progress individual pupils make, they are not sure that this group of learners make the same outstanding progress as other groups.
• Partnership work with parents is outstanding. Parents are fully involved in their children’s education. Regular meetings flag up what progress pupils are making towards their challenging targets, academically and personally. Parents are highly appreciative of the school’s work, including keeping their children safe and secure. Parents receive excellent advice from staff and external agencies.
• The school has designed a bespoke curriculum which is tailored to each pupils’ needs, interests and abilities. An excellent emphasis is placed on promoting pupils’ English, mathematical and science skills, knowledge and understanding. Skills are honed and extended in a wide range of other subjects. Enrichment activities, including visits, visitors, residential trips, focused subject study weeks and workshops, bring learning to life. The primary classroom and hub at the Royal Marsden hospital for older pupils are vibrant and well-resourced.
• Pupils learn how to appreciate and respect differences, for example through themed cultural days. Pupils explore moral and ethical issues, particularly in the bi-weekly personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) lessons. They are constantly encouraged to reflect on their work and behaviour.
• The centre receives additional pupil premium funding. Leaders ensure that this is used to excellent effect to ensure that all pupils can access the curriculum and wider experiences that the school offers to all pupils. The funding makes a positive difference and is beginning to close any differences between this group of pupils and other pupils nationally.

Governance of the school

• Members of the management committee have an incisive understanding of the school’s performance. Members bring a host of relevant skills and experience, which strengthens leadership capacity still further. Members are supportive and challenging in equal measure. This ensures that leaders secure the very best provision for pupils.
• Members manage the financial budget effectively, including the use and impact of the pupil premium funding. They understand the enduring effect that the wider curriculum has on pupils’ academic, personal and physical development. They make significant funding investments to support the wider curriculum, including a new multi-use games area and school bus.
• Members are vigilant in making sure that safeguarding policies and procedures protect pupils from all forms of potential harm.

Safeguarding

• The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.
• There is an appropriate safeguarding policy on the school’s website which considers current government guidelines.
• All staff implement the policy consistently across all sites. All the required recruitment checks and risk assessments are undertaken to secure the safety and well-being of those all pupils. This includes those pupils educated in hospital or at home.
• Leaders for safeguarding, including the two nominated members of the management committee, and the designated safeguarding lead at the hospital, maintain staff’s up-to-date knowledge of all safeguarding issues. Staff implement the safeguarding policies rigorously. Staff are vigilant in identifying potential safeguarding concerns. Subsequent referrals are dealt with swiftly and followed up with the appropriate agencies.
• Leaders and staff have a clear understanding of what the local risks are for pupils. Risks include domestic violence, female genital mutilation, child sexual exploitation, the use of social media to perpetrate peer on peer bullying, knife and gang crime. The school works closely with external agencies to minimise the risks.
• Social care and support to families are provided through home visits. Parents are sign-posted to the appropriate agencies. Pupils are taught how to keep themselves safe in PSHE lessons. There are also specific activities such as travelling safety on local public transport.

Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Outstanding

• The experienced team of staff are skilled in meeting the needs of pupils who have complex medical and mental health problems, and additional learning difficulties. They forge strong relationships with pupils, fostering their confidence. Pupils’ anxieties diminish, and almost immediately they begin to re-engage in their education.
• Teachers systematically check how well pupils achieve, within lessons and at the end of a series of lessons. This means that pupils learn through a range of activities that are usually pitched at the correct level of difficulty to enable them to learn proficiently.
• Work builds effectively on what pupils already know and can do. Significant gaps in prior learning are eliminated. Over time, pupils make strong and sustained progress, especially in English, mathematics and science.
• Teaching staff provide pupils with the right level of guidance on how well they are doing and they identify pupils’ next steps in their learning. Staff ask questions to enable pupils to explain their thinking and clarify their learning. Just occasionally teachers fail to probe more deeply to extend pupils’ thinking further.
• In some lessons, teachers ensure that pupils of different abilities tackle work which is pitched accurately. This prompts pupils to use higher thinking skills, such as analysis and evaluation. However, inconsistencies in the level of challenge that pupils are given are evident, especially for the most able pupils
• Teachers have excellent subject knowledge. They are skilled in breaking learning down into small steps and highlighting key vocabulary to consolidate pupils’ understanding. Adults support pupils’ learning well, providing good and timely guidance. Nonetheless, there are occasions when pupils who can work on their own are not always given enough opportunities to do so.
• Teaching off-site, including at home and in the hospitals, is both relevant and flexible to meet the complex needs of the pupils. Pupils access a personalised, wide and rich curriculum.

Personal development, behaviour and welfare Outstanding

Personal development and welfare

• The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is outstanding.
• Pupils make excellent progress in their personal development, particularly in gaining greater independence socially, and in their self-worth and self-esteem. Pupils’ positive attitudes to learning have a significant impact on their achievement. They remain totally involved in their work and start to believe in their capabilities once more.
• Pupils experience success because they learn about subjects which interest them. Teachers share their passion for the subjects they teach, which in turn inspires pupils to learn more, including in sporting and creative subjects.
• A good range of courses spanning academic, vocational and practical subjects, encourages pupils to prepare well for their next stage of education, employment or training.
• Pupils receive effective careers guidance so that they choose the most appropriate pathway for them when they leave school. Carefully thought out transition arrangements, to familiarise pupils with their future setting, diminish any fears of the unknown.
• Year 11 pupils enthusiastically told inspectors their ambitions for the future and what qualifications they need to help them realise these. Almost all pupils successfully go on to further education.
• A multi-disciplinary approach, using educational, social and medical expertise, including Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), provides the right level and type of additional support for pupils. Shared information, together with frequent discussions with parents and their children, means pupils’ mental well-being is boosted effectively. Pupils told inspectors that the school is ‘capable of taking you from a dark place to a new and exciting one’.
• The impact of this work means that almost a third of pupils on roll successfully reintegrated back into primarily mainstream schools or other settings in 2017-18.
• Pupils are kept safe and understand how to keep themselves safe. They know that every member of staff will listen to their concerns and act quickly to resolve any issues. Pupils understand all the forms that bullying can take. There have been no bullying incidents recently.

Behaviour

• The behaviour of pupils is outstanding.
• Pupils quickly settle into their new school because staff provide a nurturing and safe place for pupils to grow and thrive.
• Learning in lessons is calm and purposeful. Pupils’ conduct around the school is usually exemplary.
• Staff consistently promote pupils’ ability to cooperate and to develop resilience. Pupils are encouraged to identify and manage their own behaviour effectively.
• School information confirms that pupils’ attitudes to learning improves immeasurably when they attend this school. As a result, those pupils with a history of non- or poor attendance attend this school regularly.
• There have been no permanent exclusions in the last academic year.

Outcomes for pupils Outstanding

• Over time, pupils make strong and substantial progress across an extensive range of subjects, including in English, mathematics and science. The breadth of the curriculum provides pupils with a wide range of experiences. This enables them to practise and deepen their understanding in subjects in which they have a natural aptitude and interest in.
• School information provides clear evidence that differences in the progress that pupils make are almost always the result of external circumstances, usually relating to illness, which restricts their tuition time.
• Pupils, whether they are taught on-site or at the in-patient wards at the two hospitals, and the few who receive home tuition, make outstanding progress. This includes those with acute medical conditions, disadvantaged pupils, and pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities. Pupils with an education, health and care plan and those diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders also make outstanding progress.
• Work in pupils’ books, however, demonstrates that a small minority of pupils could make even more progress, including the most able. In these instances, pupils are given work which is too easy.
• Pupils achieve well irrespective of the length of time they attend the setting. The school works closely with primary-aged pupils’ mainstream schools that provide academic work to secure continuity of provision.
• Daily reading and targeted strategies to improve pupils’ comprehension and fluency, results in strong achievement in reading. Pupils develop a love of reading and confidently read aloud to their friends in lessons. The calming influence of the ‘reading dog’ instantly reduces any anxieties pupils have about reading, and encourages pupils to begin to read for meaning and pleasure.
• In 2018, all Year 11 pupils achieved at least one GCSE in a range of subjects, including English, mathematics and science. A third of pupils achieved the higher grades. All pupils attained several other nationally recognised qualifications.

School details

Unique reference number Local authority Inspection number 135010 Sutton 10058850 This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005. Type of school Pupil referral unit School category Age range of pupils Gender of pupils Pupil referral unit 5 to 19 Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 58 Appropriate authority The management committee Chair Headteacher Gordon Ironside Beverley Williamson Telephone number 020 8404 3124 Website Email address www.starservice.org.uk tuition@starservice.org.uk Date of previous inspection 23 April 2018

Information about this school

• The school caters for pupils with medical problems who are from Sutton local authority.
• Pupils are referred to the unit by mainstream schools.
• Most pupils are dual registered with their mainstream school. Approximately a fifth of pupils have an education, health and care plan. A third of pupils have been diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders. Pupils who attend the hospital classroom have complex medical needs.
• Most pupils are from a White British background.
• The proportion of pupils who are supported by the pupil premium is above average.
• The school has one main site for secondary-aged pupils at Drapers Centre. Both primary- and secondary-aged pupils who have acute medical conditions are taught at the Royal Marsden Hospital. The school also provides ‘bedside teaching’ at Queen Mary’s hospital for children and, in exceptional circumstances, some pupils receive home tuition.
• The school uses one alternative provision, SILC (skills integrated learning centre), where older pupils study for city and guilds in construction.
• Currently, there are no Reception-aged children, or post-16 students. There are only four primary-aged pupils who are educated at the Royal Marsden hospital.
• There have been several new leadership appointments in September 2018. The deputy headteacher was appointed headteacher; the assistant headteacher was appointed deputy headteacher; and a teacher at the school became assistant headteacher.

Information about this inspection

• Inspectors held discussions with the headteacher, other senior and middle leaders, the chair and members of the management committee. A telephone discussion was held with another member of the management committee. Inspectors spoke to the assistant director for education and special educational needs and/or disabilities via the telephone.
• Inspectors held a meeting with a group of pupils. There were no responses to the pupil questionnaire.
• Inspectors considered 14 responses to the online Ofsted parent questionnaire, Parent View, and the school’s most recent parent survey. Inspectors also met with a group of parents.
• Questionnaire responses from 17 staff were examined.
• Inspectors visited classes in each key stage, both within the main setting and at the Royal Marsden hospital. They observed learning in lessons, including work in pupils’ books, and in case studies. They also listened to pupils read in lessons.
• Inspectors scrutinised the school’s records of checks on pupils’ personal development and progress. They looked at a wide range of other documents, including the school’s arrangements to safeguard pupils, the school’s own self-evaluation documents and its plans for further development.

Inspection team

Mary Hinds, lead inspector Paula Farrow

Her Majesty’s Inspector Ofsted Inspector