Belfast High School

Overview

This Sustaining Improvement Inspection of Belfast High School was conducted in March 2018 amidst industrial action involving non-cooperation by teaching unions. Consequently, the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) was unable to fully evaluate the school’s capacity for improvement or assure stakeholders of the quality of education provided. The report notes that the school is “demonstrating the capacity to identify and bring about improvement” following a previous evaluation of ‘good’.

Strengths

• Pupils at post-16 level “attain very well in individual subjects and in three GCE A Levels at grades A*-C.”
• A “whole-school monitoring and tracking system is focused on the progress of pupils across the school.”
• Teacher evaluations of learning “reflect on individual pupil progress and intervention strategies.”

Areas to improve

• Attainment at GCSE is identified as an area for improvement, having been “well below average in two out of the last three years.”
• The school needs to ensure greater consistency in the quality and effectiveness of improvement planning, though this could not be fully evaluated due to the industrial action.

Safeguarding

The report states that safeguarding arrangements “reflect broadly the guidance by the Department of Education,” but the school must ensure the governing body has a trained designated governor for child protection and continues to update pastoral policies to reflect recent departmental guidance.