Silverwood School

Overview

Silverwood School is described as a “calm and purposeful” environment where pupils demonstrate strong values such as “cooperation, courage, honesty, perseverance, respect and kindness.” The report highlights that staff have high aspirations for pupils, helping them overcome significant barriers to learning and achieve ambitious outcomes. Leaders have successfully established a single identity following the amalgamation of three predecessor schools, creating an ambitious curriculum tailored to pupils’ special educational needs.

Strengths

• Pupils enjoy school, attend well, and are “confident and self-aware” due to a strong focus on wider development.
• Leaders have designed an “ambitious curriculum” with clear expectations for reading, including support for those not yet at a formal phonics stage.
• Sixth-form students are “enthusiastic” about their education, benefiting from successful college and work experience opportunities.
• Early years staff promote independence through “familiar and predictable routines,” allowing children to take on roles of responsibility as they progress.
• Governors provide a “balance of support and challenge” to ensure leaders remain clear about the school’s vision and ethos.

Areas to improve

• Leaders must ensure “effective scrutiny of the single central record” to eliminate administrative errors in safer recruitment checks.
• Staff need to use a “total communication approach consistently” across all settings, particularly during unstructured time, to reduce pupil reliance on adults.
• Leaders must ensure high expectations for learning are “fully understood by staff across the school campuses” to replicate strong practice consistently.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective, though practice does not always meet the school’s own high expectations, evidenced by missing information in records despite actions being completed.