St Mary's School

Overview: St Mary's School is a good school that continues to provide a high-quality education for its pupils, who have highly complex social, emotional and behavioural needs. The school's curriculum is designed to help pupils develop the skills they need to make a positive contribution to their school and wider community.

Strengths:

• Pupils enjoy the school's outdoor curriculum, particularly forest school and caring for the school's animals.
• Older pupils have been supported to develop their empathy and understanding of others, and to re-engage with learning.
• The school provides extensive opportunities for enrichment within the planned curriculum, supporting pupils to learn about their talents and interests.
• The school ensures that pupils receive the provision set out in their education, health and care (EHC) plans, including a broad range of interventions and therapies.

Areas to improve:

• The early reading and reading catch-up programmes are not as effective as they could be, with not all staff trained to teach early reading effectively.
• In some subjects, the curriculum lacks cohesion between the primary and secondary phases of the school, meaning pupils are not as well prepared for the secondary phase as they might be.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.