Church Lawton School

Overview

Church Lawton School is a special academy for pupils with autistic spectrum disorder, rated as ‘Good’ across all inspection categories. The report describes a calm and orderly environment where pupils are happy, feel safe, and benefit from a wide range of enrichment opportunities and effective support for their special educational needs.

Strengths

• Pupils enjoy a ‘wide range of enrichment opportunities’ that help them ‘broaden their experiences and improve their independence’.
• Leaders maintain high expectations for behaviour, ensuring the school is ‘calm and orderly’, with effective strategies to deal with bullying.
• Staff provide ‘effective support’ for pupils’ SEND, including specialist therapeutic help, and foster ‘typically positive’ relationships with parents.
• Leaders prioritise reading, ensuring pupils become ‘confident and fluent readers’ through diligent phonics instruction and targeted catch-up support.
• Pupils are ‘well prepared for life in modern Britain’ through a carefully designed PSHE curriculum and comprehensive careers education.

Areas to improve

• In a small number of foundation subjects, leaders must ‘refine the curriculum to clearly identify the knowledge that pupils must learn’ to ensure better achievement.
• Senior leaders should ensure subject leaders are ‘well trained to monitor the quality of the delivery of the curriculum’ to provide effective support to teachers.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are ‘effective’, with robust procedures in place to keep pupils safe and timely support provided through close collaboration with other agencies.