St Mary's College

Overview

The inspection was conducted during industrial action, meaning the ETI was “unable to assure the quality of education” and could not fully evaluate key areas such as teaching quality or leadership impact. Despite these limitations, the report highlights strong pupil outcomes, high satisfaction among parents and staff, and effective safeguarding arrangements based on available evidence.

Strengths

• Pupils attain “very highly” at GCSE and A level, with outcomes for those requiring additional support having “improved over the last three years”.
• Questionnaire responses from parents, staff, and pupils indicated “high levels of satisfaction” with the school’s “caring and supportive learning environment”.
• The senior leadership team provides “highly effective leadership” and fosters a “collegial ethos” where the community contributes to improvement.
• There is a “consistently strong uptake” of STEM subjects and a “robust tracking system” for pupil progression.
• Governors are “knowledgeable about the standards attained” and play a “key role” in school development planning.

Areas to improve

• The school needs to “refine the SDP” and use gathered information more effectively to inform evaluations.
• Action plans require “more robust baseline statements and more specific, measurable targets” as current quality is “variable”.

Safeguarding

The report states that safeguarding arrangements “reflect broadly the guidance from the Department of Education” and pupils reported that they “feel safe”.