Progress Schools - Gorton

Overview: Progress Schools - Gorton is a small independent school that provides education and care for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities. The school has a nurturing culture where pupils feel safe and valued, and leaders have successfully established a sense of belonging among pupils. Pupils typically make steady progress from their starting points, and most gain a range of qualifications at the end of Year 11.

Strengths:

• The school has a clear and ambitious vision for the quality of education and care that it should provide.
• Leaders have successfully established a nurturing culture in which individuals are known and feel valued.
• Pupils develop a deep sense of belonging to the school, which they describe as a family.
• Pupils are encouraged to be curious about, and respectful of, others, and learn how to conduct themselves appropriately in different contexts.
• The school provides a comprehensive curriculum for citizenship and personal, social, health and economic education.

Areas to improve:

• Leaders should continue to refine their approach to assessment to ensure that checks on pupils' knowledge align closely to what they have been taught.
• Leaders should continue to strengthen staff's expertise to reduce barriers to pupils' learning, so that pupils are supported to access the curriculum consistently well.
• At times, some staff do not make the most effective use of strategies intended to help pupils to access learning, which hinders staff from identifying any gaps in pupils' knowledge as precisely as they could.

Safeguarding: The safeguarding standards are met, meaning that leaders and/or those responsible for governance and oversight fulfil their specific responsibilities and have established an open culture in which safeguarding is everyone's responsibility and concerns are actively identified, acted upon and managed.