St Machar Academy

Overview

The inspection team found that the school offers an effective curriculum for senior phase learners, with improving attainment and achievement. However, the report identifies weaknesses in ensuring wellbeing, equality, and inclusion, alongside satisfactory performance in other areas. Consequently, the school requires additional support and a further inspection within one year to monitor progress.

Strengths

• The school provides an "effective curriculum" for the senior phase, offering a "meaningful combination of well-considered National Qualifications" that improves skills for learning, life, and work.
• Staff foster "significant partnerships" that support positive outcomes by providing learning in "real-life contexts".
• Staff collaborate effectively to improve learning, teaching, and assessment, resulting in "stronger classroom routines" and enhanced approaches to reviewing learning.

Areas to improve

• Senior leaders and staff must improve approaches to "planning, monitoring and evaluating school improvements" and develop the role of stakeholders in planned changes.
• Staff should continue to improve the quality of learning, teaching, and assessment by providing "rich learning experiences that motivate learners fully".
• Staff need to review the curriculum for S1 to S3 to provide "more challenging and deeper learning" across all entitlements.
• Approaches to promoting "equality, inclusion and respect" require improvement, including supporting groups to improve attendance, engagement, and behaviour.

Safeguarding

Senior leaders and the local authority have developed clear plans to address safeguarding areas that "required urgent action" and should continue to monitor the impact of this work.