Croydon Metropolitan College

Overview

Croydon Metropolitan College is described as a “small and close community” where students feel “happy and safe” and thrive in a “calm and caring environment.” Leaders maintain “high expectations” that motivate students to achieve well in GCSEs and A-levels, supported by a “carefully planned” curriculum and staff who are “passionate” experts in their fields.

Strengths

• The curriculum is “ambitious” and “carefully planned,” ensuring knowledge is “cumulatively developed” and students “remember what they have learned well.”
• Staff possess “particularly strong” subject knowledge and are “quick to pick up on, and address, any misunderstandings.”
• Students demonstrate “positive attitudes to their learning,” behave well, and show a “strong understanding of equality and cultural diversity.”
• Leaders have created a “united team of staff” who share a determination to support students, with parents holding staff in “exceedingly high regard.”

Areas to improve

• The personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education programme is “relatively new and not fully embedded.”
• The school has not “securely detailed the specific knowledge and range of activities” for PSHE, which “limits students’ deeper knowledge and understanding.”
• The range of activities “lacks a breadth and richness in and out of college,” requiring the offer to be “broadened and logically ordered.”

Safeguarding

The report states that “the arrangements for safeguarding are effective.”