Garstang Community Academy

Overview: Garstang Community Academy requires improvement in all areas inspected, including the quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management. The school has made some improvements, but there are still significant areas for improvement.

Strengths:

• Pupils show a keen interest in learning and respond well to the school's raised expectations for their academic outcomes.
• Pupils are typically polite and show respect to staff and to each other.
• The school has worked with the trust to enhance the strategies used to tackle bullying, and pupils with SEND are able to access learning.
• The school offers a wide range of clubs and trips to expand pupils' interests.
• The school's personal, social, health, economic education (PSHE) curriculum has been successfully redesigned, and pupils develop a strong understanding of healthy lifestyles.

Areas to improve:

• Assessment strategies are not used consistently well across different subjects, leading to misconceptions and gaps in subject knowledge that some pupils have.
• The new behaviour systems are not used consistently well by some staff, leading to poor behaviour that hinders the learning of others.
• Some pupils do not have confidence that their concerns about bullying will be resolved, leading to a lessening of their enjoyment of school.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.