From The Heamaster Mr D J Clark:
Dear Parents and Pupils, March 2008
ISI Inspection 12th - 15th November 2008
Our Inspection in November now feels like ancient history, but the final Report arrived last week. I hope you find it informative and are pleased with what you read. If you are short of time, can I suggest you skip to section 5 which gives a succinct summary of the findings. The format is quite different from previous reports, giving much less detail and, in particular, no feedback on individual subjects, which makes it in some ways a less useful document to us as a school. Inspectors have less freedom about what they say and how they say it and you may find the style rather formulaic.
We are, of course, delighted with the inspectors’ strong endorsement of what we are doing and the improvements made since the last inspection. Whilst we don’t always fully agree with their ‘next steps’, we have taken them on board and have already responded to some of them. My comments on each are as follows:
1. We have now appointed a Deputy Head of Prep who will start in September – Mr Mark Anderton, currently a senior teacher at Altrincham Prep School. This is part of an on-going process of reviewing the management structures in Prep which started with the appointment of Mrs Sharon Hurst as Head of Key Stage 1 from last September.
2. Rest assured that we do undertake a great deal of development planning and we will respond to this rather prescriptive ‘next step’ with an up-dated whole-school development plan which suits the needs of pupils and takes full account of the requirements of the school in the new co-educational context.
3. Having in the past year improved our system for supporting pupils with LDD and also asked a senior member of staff to act as Gifted and Talented Co-ordinator, we feel we have moved forward a good deal; however, clearly there is always more that can be done and we will aim to make further progress in each of these areas as appropriate; in particular, we have set aside our staff training day in April to focus on teaching styles and independent learning.
I would welcome any comments you may have about the Report; Mrs Skelly and I will be pleased to talk to any parent or pupil who would like to discuss the findings. Pupil and parental input is invaluable and is, in my view, at least as effective as an inspection report in moving us forward as a school!
To read a full copy of the inspection report click here
