Birchwood Community High School

Overview: Birchwood Community High School is a good school with a strong sense of community spirit, where pupils are warmly welcomed and encouraged to display their individuality. The school prioritises pupils' well-being and has a broad and ambitious curriculum that benefits pupils, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND).

Strengths:

• Pupils benefit from strong, caring relationships with staff.
• The school prioritises pupils' well-being and teaches them strategies for keeping themselves healthy.
• Pupils are keen to learn and engage positively in lessons.
• Behaviour around the school is calm, and pupils feel safe.
• The school's character development programme teaches pupils how to behave appropriately, and in the main, pupils behave very well.

Areas to improve:

• In a minority of subjects, the school has not defined clearly what pupils need to know and be able to do, which means that teachers cannot emphasise this important knowledge in lessons or check sufficiently well that pupils have learned the curriculum.
• Some pupils, especially those who are disadvantaged, do not attend school frequently enough, which means they do not achieve as well as they should.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.