Portland High School

Overview

Education Scotland inspectors visited Portland High School in December 2024, engaging with parents, young people, and staff. The report highlights positive relationships and successful community partnerships, while noting that evaluations for “Learning, teaching and assessment” and “Raising attainment and achievement” are “satisfactory”. Inspectors expressed confidence in the school’s capacity to improve, meaning no further visits will take place.

Strengths

• Senior leaders and staff “build positive relationships with young people and their families” and are “responsive to any changes in young people’s needs”.
• Staff collaborate with local partners to provide “personal achievement learning experiences”, helping young people develop “communication, resilience and taking on responsibility”.
• Young people gain “useful employability skills” through the ‘developing the young workforce’ initiative, with all leavers in 2024 moving on successfully to further education, training, or employment.

Areas to improve

• Senior leaders and staff must “identify and adopt a wider range of approaches to support all young people to attend school regularly and on a full-time basis”.
• Leaders should work with staff to ensure all young people experience “consistently high-quality learning activities”.
• Staff need to continue efforts to “raise all young people’s attainment and achievement across the broad general education and senior phase”.

Safeguarding

The report does not contain specific statements regarding safeguarding arrangements or outcomes.