The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Since your appointment as head of school in January 2018, your strong and passionate leadership has been moving the school forward rapidly. Working alongside a determined and thoughtful executive headteacher, you have developed a cohesive staff team that is committed to providing a good-quality education for all pupils. In this work, you are supported well by a dedicated and effective leadership team, which has helped you to develop an inclusive culture at this smaller-than-average school. The committed governing body is supportive of the school while also holding you and other leaders to account rigorously. Members of the governing body have wide-ranging skills and experience, sharing your vision for continued improvement. Governors understand the needs of the school through regular visits which enable them to check that the good practice you report is evident and sustained. To ensure that they are continuing to make the best impact they can, governors have commissioned an external review of their practice. Lines of accountability at all levels have been strengthened. Senior leaders meet frequently with heads of department and hold them accountable for the progress of all pupils. For example, you have introduced new target setting and assessment processes. These are raising teachers’ expectations of what pupils can achieve, and pupils respond well to new challenges. Alongside this, teachers are taking greater individual responsibility for promoting better standards in classrooms; much of this was in evidence during the inspection from observations and discussions. Your vision of ensuring that pupils from all backgrounds and of all abilities do well is shared by staff. This is a strength of the school. The overwhelming majority of staff expressed strong support for the improvements made this year. One teacher commented, ‘Since being under new leadership, staff well-being has been highly considered.’ Good professional development of staff at all levels is in place. Middle leaders, in particular, are offered good opportunities to take on new responsibilities and so enhance their leadership skills. The previous inspection report recommended that teaching should enable pupils to make links between new and prior learning, as well as setting challenging work to ensure that pupils make rapid and sustained progress. Until recently, this was only partly successful, as teachers had little capacity to implement this. Now, the school makes good use of the high-quality support it receives from the academy trust, as well as its own bespoke and regular training. Safeguarding is effective. The leadership team has ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose. All policies and records relating to the safeguarding of pupils are up to date and of high quality. Members of staff, including the designated safeguarding leader, receive regular training and know their responsibilities well. Staff vetting and checking systems are very detailed. Leaders at all levels rigorously promote a culture of vigilance and care. Very well-documented evidence of the timely referrals to external agencies to secure extra help showed that pupils have benefited well. You ensure that staff and governors understand and act on clear procedures if they have a concern about any pupil’s welfare. Much of this practice is exemplary. You have created an open atmosphere in the school so that safeguarding issues are discussed honestly. As a result, pupils are confident, safe and feel well cared for. Pupils are well informed about online safety and know how to keep themselves safe when using the internet. The school also promotes equality and tackles discrimination positively. Any use of discriminatory or derogatory language is tackled swiftly. As well as showing respect to their teachers, pupils also show respect to each other, and value their differences. Bullying is rare and, where it does occur, pupils are confident that it is dealt with swiftly and effectively. Pupils who act as safeguarding ambassadors are highly valued and provide very effective support to other pupils. Inspection findings We considered how effectively governors and leaders dealt with the dip in overall performance in 2018. The new leadership team had accurately predicted the belowaverage progress made by Year 11 pupils but had little time to rectify it. Since September, leaders have responded to this dip in performance promptly and effectively. You prioritised making helpful changes to the curriculum and ensuring that teachers raised expectations for pupils to enable them to achieve their potential. Effective management systems are in place to track pupils’ academic progress and to intervene where progress is less than expected. The school’s tracking systems indicate that pupils are now making faster progress. This is particularly evident in Year 11, where progress measures for all pupils are expected to be in line with national averages by the end of the year. The introduction of a Progress 20 group, where more intensive support and teaching is provided, has been an early success. However, leaders know that the most able pupils are currently not making good enough progress for them to achieve as well as they could. Senior and middle leaders have improved the monitoring of teaching, learning and assessment, and teaching now challenges pupils to learn well. Pupils have a clear understanding of what progress they should make following the introduction of a new system for setting targets. Leaders focus on particular aspects of teaching, ensuring that monitoring and subsequent professional development are aligned with the school’s development priorities. This is leading to greater consistency in the quality of teaching across the school. Observations of learning and scrutiny of pupils’ work showed that current pupils are making good progress in most subjects, but especially in English, history, science, geography and art because teaching is very effective. In these subjects, teachers are placing important emphasis on improving the knowledge that pupils need to understand and build on their learning. In a history class, this approach worked well, because pupils knew enough and could remember enough to make well-informed choices about how to move their learning on about crime and punishment. Pupils are making good progress in English because they are well supported to develop their reading and writing skills. Those who join the school with standards below those expected for their age catch up through effective support. However, pupils’ achievement in mathematics is not yet as strong. This is because teachers are not consistently focusing closely enough on developing the skills and depth of knowledge that pupils need to become good mathematicians. Improvements in curriculum planning are leading to better progress for pupils across the school. The key stage 3 curriculum has recently been reviewed and revised to develop the knowledge pupils need for the next steps in their learning and to prepare them better for GCSE. As one pupil said, these improvements encourage them to ‘know more’. Subject leaders are empowered to develop better links between what pupils know and the skills needed to show their knowledge. This is evident through the emphasis on literacy skills in most subjects across the curriculum. Additionally, leaders have placed greater emphasis on better quality careers advice so that pupils are prepared well for the next steps in their education, employment or training. Overall, levels of attendance for the last academic year were below the national average. The proportion of pupils regularly absent was also higher than seen nationally. Inspectors found that renewed and more concerted efforts by leaders are having a positive impact. Rates of attendance so far for this academic year have risen and are now in line with the national average. Pupils told inspectors that leaders have made it clear that attending regularly and being punctual are high priorities. In particular, persistent absenteeism has dropped as pastoral leaders are working effectively to continue to tackle this, making pupils and their families aware of the link between high attendance and achievement. Behaviour is improving, with a reduction in exclusions over the last two years. Overall, pupils benefit from good relationships with staff. These are built on mutual respect and a growing strong work ethic. Consequently, pupils behave well. They move around the building in an orderly and purposeful way and socialise well at break times. The Pause Room, where pupils can be calm and quiet at lunchtimes, is used well and welcomed by many. The school’s value of ‘#Happy Life’ is embraced well by pupils, who understand its meaning and significance. Pupils benefit from leadership opportunities that help them to improve their social skills. The large majority of pupils show positive attitudes to learning and participate readily in lessons. Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: the most able pupils make consistently good progress across subjects the planned improvements in mathematics raise standards effectively in pupils’ learning. I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body and the chief executive officer of the multi-academy trust, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children’s services for Hampshire. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website. Yours sincerely Hugh Betterton Ofsted Inspector Information about the inspection During the inspection, inspectors spoke with you, the executive headteacher, senior leaders, the special educational needs coordinator, pastoral staff and five subject leaders. Forty staff questionnaire responses were analysed. Meetings were held with four members of the local governing body and the regional director of The Kemnal Academies Trust. Inspectors met with pupils from key stages 3 and 4 and considered the 81 responses to Ofsted’s online pupil survey. Inspectors observed pupils’ behaviour in lessons, at breaktime and lunchtime and at the start of the day. Jointly with senior leaders, inspectors observed learning in both key stages. Inspectors also scrutinised pupils’ work when in lessons and looked at a sample of pupils’ work from all year groups. Inspectors considered performance information and reviewed a range of documentation relating to the school’s self-evaluation, improvement planning, governance and documents and records relating to safeguarding.