St Mary's Christian Brothers' Grammar School

Overview

This Sustaining Improvement Inspection was conducted during industrial action involving non-cooperation by staff, significantly limiting the evaluation. Consequently, the inspectorate could not assess the school’s capacity for self-evaluation or verify progress on previous improvement priorities. The report concludes that the ETI is unable to assure stakeholders of the quality of education provided.

Strengths

• The previous 2014 inspection evaluated the school as “good” and noted it was “demonstrating the capacity to identify and bring about improvement.”
• The school provided evidence that safeguarding arrangements “reflect broadly the guidance issued by the Department of Education.”
• Pupils reported that they “feel safe in school” and are aware of procedures regarding safety concerns.

Areas to improve

• The inspection was unable to evaluate whether the school had sustained improvements in “the quality of the pupils’ learning experiences and their outcomes,” a priority from the 2014 inspection.
• The school must address the inability of the ETI to assure parents of educational quality due to staff non-cooperation.

Safeguarding

The report states that while arrangements broadly reflect Departmental guidance and pupils feel safe, the ETI was “unable to evaluate fully the outworking of the arrangements for safeguarding in the school” owing to the industrial action.