Bury St Edmunds County High School

Overview: Bury St Edmunds County High School is a school that has made significant improvements since the last inspection. The school has a strong sense of community, with pupils feeling valued and listened to. Leaders have implemented a highly effective personal, social and health education programme that has a positive impact on the culture of the school.

Strengths:

• The school has a highly effective personal, social and health education programme that is well-sequenced and adapted to suit the needs of pupils.
• Pupils are confident in talking about their learning and can apply this to real life scenarios.
• The wide range of extra-curricular activities further supports pupils' learning, with opportunities for pupils to develop skills such as confidence and resilience.
• Leaders have developed a high-quality professional learning programme which is contributing to improvements in the quality of teaching.
• The school has a strong sense of community, with pupils feeling valued and listened to.

Areas to improve:

• Leaders should continue their work to support pupils to attend regularly, particularly those who are disadvantaged and who have special educational needs and/or disabilities.
• Leaders should embed the consistency of adaptive teaching to further raise the achievement of disadvantaged pupils.

Safeguarding: The safeguarding standards are met, with leaders and/or those responsible for governance fulfilling their specific responsibilities and having established an open culture in which safeguarding is everyone's responsibility and concerns are actively identified, acted upon and managed.