The Fountain School

Overview: The Fountain School is a small independent school with 39 pupils on roll, where pupils feel a sense of belonging and are helped to build positive relationships with each other and with staff. The school has a Muslim ethos and leaders have developed a nurturing environment that makes pupils feel safe.

Strengths:

• Pupils achieve well, with performance in national assessments enabling them to make positive next steps.
• Pupils can explain scientific concepts and articulate the motivations and actions of Lady Macbeth.
• Pupils' knowledge of world religions is particularly rich.
• Attendance is high, with leaders monitoring attendance closely and working successfully with families.
• Pupils encourage each other to attend well and respect teachers and show maturity in their conduct.
• The culture of respect means that bullying and discriminatory language are not an issue.

Areas to improve:

• Leaders sometimes do not consider how they will adapt commercial curriculums and resources they purchase, leading to some repetition of curriculum content.
• Leaders have not fully considered the breadth of opportunities in the local and regional area, and activities are not as systematically planned as they might be to expose pupils to a more diverse range of aspects of British culture.
• The proprietor does not have a clear view of the strengths and areas in need of further development, and lacks clear plans to continue to develop the school.

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