Oasis Academy Fir Vale

Overview: Oasis Academy Fir Vale is a school with a unique context and high level of mobility, which has a negative impact on pupils' outcomes. Despite these challenges, published outcomes are improving year on year. Pupils develop the essential knowledge they need to prepare them for their next stage of development.

Strengths:

• The school's focus on transcription skills and oracy is having a positive impact on the quality of early writing.
• Pupils develop reading skills well, with many able to decode words using the sounds they know and apply them to read sentences.
• The school's supportive approach to behaviour ensures pupils learn how to behave well, and they develop a clear understanding of right and wrong.
• The school's 'Oasis Hub' model provides innovative support to the whole school community to remove barriers, ensuring pupils are ready to access everything the school has to offer.
• The school's deliberately considered approach to inclusion ensures pupils receive high-quality support in lessons, and they are confident, safe, and trust that staff are there to help them.

Areas to improve:

• Leaders should ensure that the curriculum is taught consistently well and includes clear explanations and precise modelling so that pupils develop detailed knowledge across the curriculum.
• Leaders should ensure that staff apply agreed approaches to assessing pupils' understanding consistently in lessons so that gaps in learning are reduced over time and pupils achieve well.
• Leaders should ensure that they continue to communicate the importance of attendance to parents and carers and provide high-quality support so that attendance continues to improve for all pupils.

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.