St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School, A Voluntary Academy

Overview: St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School is a good school where pupils feel nurtured and supported. Leaders are ambitious and care for pupils, and the school has a warm and caring culture. Pupils behave well and are polite to all members of the school community.

Strengths:

• Leaders are clear about their high ambition for pupils, both academically and as citizens of the world.
• The school has a strong culture of safeguarding, where pupils feel happy and safe.
• Pupils can access a wide range of opportunities, both academically and as extra-curricular activities.
• Staff at all levels appreciate the sense of community and feel well supported with their workload.
• The school has a well-developed system to support pupils to attend school.

Areas to improve:

• Leaders do not analyse the impact of their actions carefully enough, and some recent changes have variable impact for specific groups of pupils.
• Pupils are not given enough time to practise new skills and secure their knowledge before the teaching moves on.
• Some activity choices do not help pupils to remember the intended content, leading to a lack of depth of understanding in some subjects.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective, with the safeguarding team having effective procedures in place to make sure that they know their pupils well, and staff being clear on what to look out for and how to report concerns about pupils’ safety if needed.