Pictor Academy

Overview

This ungraded inspection found that aspects of the school’s work “may not be as strong as at the time of the previous inspection,” triggering a future graded inspection. Despite this, the school remains a “caring, nurturing and welcoming environment” where pupils are happy, behave well, and benefit from strong relationships built on “mutual trust and respect.”

Strengths

• Pupils enjoy school and receive a “high level of support,” fostering positive attitudes towards learning.
• The personal, social, health and economic curriculum effectively prepares pupils for future life steps, including understanding consent and safety.
• Staff act “promptly and successfully” to support pupils, maintaining “calm, safe environments” for learning.
• Pupils develop fundamental communication skills early, with appropriate progression to phonics and reading.
• Staff appreciate recent workload refinements and fully support the changes being made to the curriculum.

Areas to improve

• The school must “finalise its curriculum thinking” in remaining areas to provide teachers with greater clarity on what pupils need to learn and by when.
• Teachers need to embed new methods for checking learning so they can securely assess what pupils have retained from previous lessons.
• Targets set for pupils must be more specific and closely linked to their education, health and care plans to ensure they meet individual needs.
• Trustees and governors should implement more rigorous systems to check on the school’s performance and effectiveness.

Safeguarding

The report states that “the arrangements for safeguarding are effective.”