Highfield School

Overview

Highfield School continues to be a good school, effectively preparing pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities for adulthood. The curriculum is carefully shaped to meet pupils’ social, behavioural, and academic needs, ensuring they leave with clear pathways for the future.

Strengths

• The curriculum is tailored to individual needs, with staff building life skills through initiatives like ‘shop-cook-eat’ and the school bank.
• Leaders plan exceptionally well for personal development, integrating community events and citizenship into school life.
• Pupils feel happy and safe, treating one another with kindness in a calm, friendly environment.
• Staff know pupils as individuals, using subject trackers to plan precise next steps in skills like spelling and grammar.
• The personal, social and health education curriculum is tailored extremely well, supporting pupils to make sensible choices and keep themselves safe.

Areas to improve

• In some curriculum areas, the precise subject knowledge teachers want pupils to learn is not clearly identified, which can create gaps in pupils’ knowledge.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.