The Cedars Academy

Overview

The Cedars Academy continues to be a good school, where pupils with special educational needs and disabilities thrive. Leaders have designed tailored pathways and a highly specialised curriculum that reflects the diverse needs of students, ensuring they ‘achieve to their full potential’.

Strengths

• Staff possess ‘extremely detailed knowledge’ of each pupil and have built ‘strong, caring relationships’ with them.
• Most pupils behave ‘exceptionally well’, moving around the school calmly and with respect, while bullying is rare and addressed quickly.
• The curriculum is ‘carefully planned’ and implemented effectively, with skilful adaptations for complex needs, such as real-life maths tasks in local shops.
• A ‘carefully considered approach to reading’ supports progression from shared stories to fluent reading, with books matched to pupils’ abilities and interests.
• Parents and carers are ‘overwhelmingly positive’ about the school, praising staff efforts to support every child according to their individual needs.

Areas to improve

• In a small number of subjects, new subject leaders do yet provide appropriate challenge to teachers, meaning the curriculum is not consistently implemented as intended.
• Recent leadership changes have created a ‘lack of clarity’ at trust level regarding support for school leaders, requiring rapid implementation of roles to maintain accountability.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective, with a ‘strong culture of safeguarding’ across the school, rigorous recruitment checks, and relevant staff training.