INSPIRE Free Special School

Overview

INSPIRE Free Special School continues to be a good school. Leaders have maintained high standards despite turbulence in trust leadership, ensuring that pupils with social, emotional and mental health needs feel welcome and supported. The school provides a broad curriculum designed to prepare pupils academically, socially, and emotionally for their next steps.

Strengths

• Staff build positive relationships with pupils, helping them regulate emotions and establish regular attendance, which has a "highly positive impact" on engagement.
• Classrooms are "generally settled and calm," with pupils understanding behaviour expectations and taking ownership of their personalised targets.
• The redeveloped reading programme and phonics approach have successfully supported pupils to "catch up with their reading" and read aloud with confidence.
• Mathematics features a "clear and well sequenced curriculum" with small steps of knowledge, ensuring pupils achieve well and gaps in understanding are addressed.
• Personal, social and health education is taught by expert staff, enabling pupils to confidently explain complex issues such as consent.

Areas to improve

• Leaders must ensure that "small steps of learning" are carefully considered across all subjects, particularly where curriculum planning has been less rigorous.
• The school needs to coherently plan how to develop pupils’ spoken language to broaden vocabularies and improve their ability to discuss and debate.
• Analysis of attendance patterns for pupils with persistently low attendance requires sharpening to identify barriers and plan strategic interventions.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.