Tees Valley College

Overview: Tees Valley College is a small, nurturing school that provides a highly effective programme for supporting pupils' personal development and wellbeing. Pupils enjoy attending the school and appreciate the support they get from staff. The school has a strong moral purpose and a culture of high expectations and moral purpose underpins the school's ethos.

Strengths:

• Pupils make effective, and sometimes rapid, progress through the curriculum.
• Pupils are typically well prepared to succeed in national tests and examinations.
• The school has a highly effective programme for supporting pupils' personal development.
• Pupils develop an appreciation of important values through participation in charity fundraising, student elections and celebrating events of national and international importance.
• The school provides independent careers advice and guidance.

Areas to improve:

• Leaders should ensure that high rates of attendance are maintained over time and that persistent absence continues to reduce rapidly.
• Leaders should ensure that teachers consistently make highly effective choices about what to teach and how to teach it in the context of each subject and each pupil's needs.
• Leaders should engage more fully with employers in the local area to ensure that pupils are well informed about careers options and have a wide range of ambitious ideas for future employment.

Safeguarding: The safeguarding standards are met. This means that leaders and/or those responsible for governance and oversight fulfil their specific responsibilities and have established an open culture in which safeguarding is everyone's responsibility and concerns are actively identified, acted upon and managed.