St John's School

Overview: St John's School provides education for pupils with severe and multiple learning difficulties, and has a good quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management. The school is part of the Bedford Inclusive Learning Trust.

Strengths:

• Calm and clear routines help pupils to settle as soon as they arrive at school each morning.
• Pupils form strong and nurturing relationships with staff.
• Pupils are safe and secure, and express their enjoyment of school using words such as ‘happy’ and ‘friendly’.
• Pupils want to learn and have high aspirations to work hard and try their best.
• The school understands that communication is key in helping pupils to share their feelings, and positive approaches used by staff help pupils to understand their behaviours.
• Pupils show care and respect for one another and behave well in and out of class.
• The school provides a broad and ambitious curriculum, with a focus on preparation for the future.
• Teachers make skilful use of different communication approaches when teaching, and their subject knowledge is secure.
• Staff have a secure knowledge of what each pupil needs to learn, and adults work well together as teams to share information and make careful checks of pupils’ progress.
• Pupils learn phonics as soon as they are ready, and staff are well trained to deliver the school’s chosen programme.
• Pupils enjoy a variety of opportunities to enrich their learning and to prepare them for adulthood.

Areas to improve:

• In a few areas of the curriculum, the plans do not provide sufficient detail to support the building of learning for pupils with complex needs.
• In a few subjects, teachers do not make appropriate pedagogical choices to teach the curriculum well.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.