Quality Assurance Review finds Longhill Ready for Ofsted

Headteacher Haydn Stride was delighted by the results of a recent review by Longhill’s Challenge Partners who found that, in response to its last Ofsted inspection, the school can now be considered good in many areas and excellent in others.

Challenge Partners, which is a national group made up of peer school leaders, was recently evaluated by the independent Institute of Education who found that, “It is only through robust peer reviews that schools can calibrate their self-evaluation, reassure their governing bodies, gain from insights into other schools and grow their leadership capacity through what teachers constantly describe as ‘the best professional development they have ever had’.” Matthews and Headon, 2015

Challenge Partners found that:

• The documents produced by the Headteacher indicate that there is a high level of well-focused drive and ambition. The School Improvement Plan addresses all the key issues. 

• Independent learning was a feature noted during lesson observations. This was because teachers provided well-pitched challenges that encouraged students to take responsibility for their own learning. 

• During lesson observations, there was strong evidence of extremely good teacher/student relationships and, as a result, students were impeccably polite and helpful. 

• Strong evidence was seen of teachers making strategic use of assessment data so that individual student needs could be better met. 

• A robust and comprehensive system of assessment is a developing area of excellence within the school. Data collection and analysis is exemplary and the available information is being put to increasingly better use in the classroom.  This results in students being well supported and many examples were seen of students responding positively to feedback. 

• The work done to develop and embed an approach to staff appraisal at this school has clearly been very effective and is an example of excellent practice. Procedures are intensive and have resulted in significant improvements in both teacher performance and student progress. 

Mr Stride concluded, “Our response to Longhill’s last Ofsted inspection has been robust and far-reaching; I am extremely pleased that our Challenge Partners have recognised this and have focused on so many good and excellent practices here.  We are proud to be a beacon of exemplary practice in our staff appraisal systems and will now strive to build and consolidate all our practices to make even further improvements across teaching and learning throughout the school.”

For full report, click here [wpfilebase tag=file id=177 /]

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