St Stephen's High School

Overview

The inspection found that St Stephen’s High School benefits from “highly effective leadership” which is raising aspirations and supporting a culture of improvement. While the school demonstrates “good” performance in leadership, learning, and attainment, the evaluation for ensuring wellbeing, equality, and inclusion was rated as “satisfactory”. Inspectors expressed confidence that the school has the capacity to continue improving without further visits.

Strengths

• The headteacher’s leadership is “highly effective” and supports a “culture of improvement” while raising staff and pupil aspirations.
• Staff use varied approaches to engage young people, who “know the purpose of learning” and what is required for success.
• Pupils have a “strong sense of belonging” and feel valued through “nurturing, positive and respectful relationships” based on Gospel values.
• There is “strong attainment for leavers and for those at S4” in both literacy and numeracy.

Areas to improve

• Staff should build leadership capacity to “consistently contribute to aspects of school improvement”.
• Teachers must ensure tasks are at the “right level of difficulty” for all pupils, including providing greater challenge where appropriate.
• Senior leaders should better support pupil wellbeing and strengthen planning to help young people meet personal targets.
• The curriculum requires review to ensure pupils build on prior learning more effectively and access a wider range of senior phase courses.

Safeguarding

The report states that senior leaders and pupil support teachers should ensure they “support young people better to improve their wellbeing” and strengthen approaches to support planning.