Pupils and staff from town school celebrate good Ofsted report (From Bromsgrove Advertiser)
Get involved! Send your photos, video, news & views by texting BA NEWS to 80360 or e-mail us
Pupils and staff from town school celebrate good Ofsted report
8:00am Friday 26th October 2012 in News
By Sam Greenway
Buy this photo »
Good Ofsted: Rigby Hall School's headteacher Cynthia Pitts with pupils Mary Tait, Elliot Lee and Charley Wooley, with a copy of the school’s good Ofsted report.
A BROMSGROVE school has been celebrating after receiving a good Ofsted inspection.
Inspectors visited Rigby Hall Special School, in Rigby Lane, for two days in September, observing 15 lessons.
The Aston Fields-based school caters for town children with special needs.
The school has been given a rating of two, which in Ofsted’s criteria is good.
The rating is an improvement on the school's previous inspection when it received three - satisfactory.
In all four categories judged; leadership and management, achievement of pupils, quality of teaching and the behaviour and safety of pupils, the school received the good rating.
Among the inspector's key findings was that the quality of teaching and learning had improved considerably since the last inspection, and is good across the whole school.
Attendance was found to be above average, all pupils were making good progress, and teachers and their leaders had ensured there had been rapid improvements in teaching and achievement since the last inspection.
Inspectors also recognised that, given the pupils’ learning difficulties, they had a good understanding of how to stay safe and healthy.
The report suggested the school could improve further by improving the rate of progress in maths, so that it matches other subjects, and it could ensure the small minority of pupils who do not always know their targets are clear how they can improve.
Cynthia Pitts said in the three years since she became the school’s headteacher, staff had worked incredibly hard to improve teaching and learning.
“Having worked so hard to make such positive changes we were absolutely delighted when OFSTED came early in the term and judged the school to be good,” she said.
“It is a credit to all who attend or work at Rigby Hall that we have achieved this.
“Our Ofsted report quotes a student as saying ‘learning is fun and our work is interesting’ - that sums it up for me.”
