Future First Independent School

Overview: Future First Independent School is a small school with a new staff team and a reinvigorated ambition to provide for pupils who have had negative experiences of schools in the past. Pupils find a caring team of staff, a warm welcome, and a curriculum designed to inspire them and prepare them for later life.

Strengths:

• Pupils are safe and feel secure in this small setting because of the positive, respectful relationships between staff and pupils.

• Pupils demonstrate positive attitudes to learning and are typically enthusiastic about their work, particularly in the vocational options they choose.

• Pupils are polite, kind, and helpful towards staff and their peers, and are understanding and respectful of one another.

• The school has been successful in engaging pupils who have experienced very low attendance in previous settings, and helping them overcome any worries or anxieties about coming to school.

• The school's systems to ensure that pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) get the right support are improving, with staff receiving training to better provide for pupils with SEND.

Areas to improve:

• Leaders should put in place effective strategies to support pupils to gain secure foundational knowledge in English and mathematics.

• Leaders should ensure that teaching is effective, underpinned by consistently high expectations and embedded throughout the school so that pupils make successful progress across the curriculum.

• Leaders should improve the provision for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities so that learning is adapted as necessary, enabling pupils to achieve well.

• The proprietor should ensure that all the independent school standards are met fully and consistently.

• The proprietor should strengthen the personal development offer to ensure that it is coherent, well planned, and meets the needs of all pupils effectively.

Safeguarding: The safeguarding standards are met, with leaders and/or those responsible for governance and oversight 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.