Beis Yaakov High School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Over time, leaders have prioritised the needs of staff to the detriment of pupils' education. There is a deeply entrenched culture among staff of apathy and lack of routine. Staff do not take their roles as educators seriously enough.

They have low expectations for how pupils should behave and what pupils should achieve. Leaders, and staff, have failed pupils.

Despite the acute weaknesses in their education, pupils reported that they enjoy school.

Pupils were not concerned about bullying. They believe that staff deal with any incidents of bullying appropriately. Pupils said that they feel safe, happy and value the time that they get to socialise with their pe...ers.

However, pupils are not safe at this school. Staff attendance and punctuality are erratic. Pupils are poorly supervised and frequently left to their own devices.

For many pupils, socialising has taken precedence over their learning. Pupils are habitually late to lessons. They are slow to settle and some display negative attitudes towards their teachers.

This impedes how well pupils learn.

Pupils do not benefit from a broad and balanced curriculum, particularly at key stage 3. They do not build up a rich body of subject knowledge.

This stifles their aspirations. Pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) receive an exceptionally poor quality of education. Leaders do not prepare pupils for life in modern Britain.

Pupils' opportunities for their wider personal development are severely curtailed by leaders' decisions. For example, leaders fail to teach pupils about all of the protected characteristics.

What does the school do well and what does it need to do better?

Leaders and governors have failed to tackle the weaknesses identified at the previous inspection.

Governors and leaders have not succeeded in acting quickly enough to arrest the significant decline in the standard of education that pupils receive. Although governors have recently appointed new leaders to run the school, the work that they have done is too little and too late to improve the quality of education for the majority of pupils.

Leaders' efforts to increase the breadth and depth of the key stage 3 curriculum have been in vain.

Many decisions that leaders have made about the curriculum are not in the best educational interests of pupils. For example, there is insufficient time for pupils to learn any secular subject in depth. This, coupled with pupils frequently being late to lessons, means that pupils do not have the secure foundational knowledge of a broad and balanced curriculum.

The curriculum is inadequate. Pupils do not learn well.In many subjects, the curriculum lacks ambition, coherence and balance.

Leaders have not thought about the building blocks of knowledge that pupils need to learn and retain across a broad range of subjects. Some subjects, such as music and physical education, have only recently been reintroduced. There is no well-thought-out curriculum in place in many subjects.

As a result, teachers do not know what to teach. Pupils' learning in these subjects is poor. Added to this, few pupils choose to follow the English Baccalaureate suite of subjects in key stage 4.

The leadership of the curriculum is weak. There are no subject leaders in place. Teachers have limited guidance about the content of the curriculum and how best to deliver it.

Senior leaders with oversight of the curriculum are attempting to address this. While a more structured, coherent curriculum is in place for one or two subjects, there are no processes in place to check how effective these curriculums are. Senior leaders, governors and trustees recognise that this position cannot continue.

Leaders' approaches to assessment are haphazard and unhelpful. Many teachers lack the subject expertise or qualifications required to design and deliver a curriculum well. Teachers do not consider what pupils already know and can do.

Teachers do not routinely encourage pupils to draw on prior knowledge. Pupils get a poor deal. They are left to flounder.

Leaders have put some support in place for younger pupils who struggle with reading. However, there is no whole-school approach to reading. Leaders and teachers remain unclear about which older pupils may need support to develop their reading knowledge.

Leaders' systems for identifying pupils' additional needs, including those with SEND, are ineffective. Leaders' and teachers' expectations of what pupils with SEND can achieve are low. Until recently, pupils with SEND were withdrawn from lessons and taught separately from their peers.

This has had a considerable and detrimental effect on the education that these pupils have experienced. While this practice has now ceased, pupils with SEND have substantial gaps in their knowledge and wider personal development. Teachers are ill-equipped to educate pupils with SEND or to help them to catch up with their peers.

Learning time is severely affected by pupils' tardiness in attending lessons on time. Pupils' lateness goes unchallenged by teachers. Pupils often roam the corridors when they should be in classrooms.

They often display disrespectful attitudes towards staff and their environment. In lessons, pupils are easily distracted and chat continuously. Teachers do not know how to resolve this behaviour.

They have not linked the deficiencies in the curriculum to pupils' declining behaviour.

Leaders do not know which pupils are on site during the school day. Older pupils, pupils with SEND, and those who are disadvantaged do not attend school regularly.

In addition, some pupils who attend school fail to attend lessons. Leaders have not done enough to tackle the concerns about pupils' rates of attendance and punctuality, despite being aware of them. As a result, some pupils are unsafe and unsupervised.

The opportunities that leaders provide for pupils' wider personal development are limited. For example, leaders have not ensured that pupils learn about all of the post-16 opportunities for further education, employment or training available to them when they leave school.

Some staff regularly arrive at school late.

Other staff are not in classrooms when lessons start and pupils are unsupervised. Staff do not appreciate the effects that their actions have on pupils' learning, safety and well-being.

Many leaders and governors do not demonstrate that they have the knowledge, skills and understanding to improve the quality of education for pupils at the pace required.

Leaders are aware that some parents and carers are losing confidence in the school's ability to educate their children in a safe environment.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are not effective.

Governors have failed in their statutory duties to safeguard pupils.

Leaders and staff have a laissez-faire approach to safeguarding. Leaders have not assured themselves that pupils are safe. Their systems and arrangements for safeguarding pupils are not fit for purpose.

Pupils do not know who to go to if they have concerns. This increases pupils' vulnerability.

Staff are not suitably trained to recognise when a pupil may be at risk of harm.

The procedures for reporting concerns are unclear and ineffective. For example, staff report safeguarding concerns on a slip of paper that is left at the reception desk.

Leaders do not have appropriate systems in place to follow up on the safety of those pupils who are frequently absent from school.

This includes vulnerable pupils and pupils with SEND. Some pupils attend school on a part-time basis. Leaders do not have good enough reasons for agreeing to part-time attendance for these pupils.

Leaders cannot assure themselves that these pupils are safe when they are not at school.

Pupils are not taught about risks or how to stay safe in the wider community. Leaders have chosen not to teach pupils about healthy relationships.

They have not followed the statutory guidance on relationships and sex education. Younger pupils do not learn about how to stay mentally healthy.

More recently, leaders have begun to accept the endemic weaknesses in the school's safeguarding procedures.

They are now engaging external agencies to do a root-and-branch review. However, it is too early to see any impact of this work.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• There is very little leadership capacity to develop a purposeful curriculum.

The curriculum is not broad, balanced or coherently designed. It is not ambitious. This is particularly the case in key stage 3.

As a result, pupils, including pupils with SEND, do not build up a deep body of knowledge, skills or understanding of different subject content. Leaders must take immediate action to ensure that the curriculum in all subjects is designed effectively and that it meets pupils' learning needs. ? Teachers and leaders have low expectations of pupils with SEND.

Until this year, pupils with SEND have been routinely withdrawn from the main curriculum. They have not had equality of opportunity. Leaders must ensure that pupils with SEND receive an appropriate standard of education, which is as ambitious as their peers.

They must also ensure that staff are trained well to accurately identify pupils' additional needs. Leaders must train staff to adapt the delivery of the curriculum to help pupils with SEND to catch up with their peers. ? Teachers do not have the essential knowledge that pupils need to learn.

Therefore, they do not know how to choose the most appropriate pedagogical activities to teach new content and to help pupils to build their knowledge over time. As well as this, many teachers are not experts in their fields. Some teachers do not have the required knowledge to deliver subject curriculums effectively.

This means that pupils do not learn as well as they should. Leaders must ensure that staff have the knowledge, skills and understanding to deliver a high-quality curriculum to all pupils. ? Staff are often late to school or to lessons.

Leaders do not know which staff should be in school and by when. As a result, pupils' safety is compromised. Leaders should ensure that staff attend work on time and that they are punctual to lessons.

• Some pupils' rates of attendance are very poor, as are levels of punctuality and incidents of internal truancy. Leaders do not have effective systems in place to manage pupils' attendance. They do not know which pupils are in school or not.

This is a serious safeguarding issue. Leaders must take immediate action to improve the systems to manage pupils' attendance. They should ensure that pupils attend school regularly.

• Leaders have not established consistently high expectations for pupils' behaviour. As a result, some pupils display negative attitudes to learning. They are disrespectful to each other and to other adults.

Leaders must take action to establish secure routines where pupils behave well and have positive attitudes to learning. ? Pupils do not benefit from a coherently planned programme of wider personal development. This includes lack of access to impartial careers information that prepares them for life in modern Britain.

As a result, pupils do not gain the knowledge that they need to make informed decisions. Leaders must ensure that they develop a comprehensive programme of personal development that enables pupils to realise their potential and to take their place in modern Britain. ? Leaders and governors have failed to act on the areas for improvement that were left at the previous inspection.

They have not done enough to tackle endemic and systemic weaknesses. As a result, the quality of education has declined to an unacceptable standard. Leaders and governors must take immediate action to improve all aspects of the school so that pupils receive an appropriate standard of education.

• Leaders and governors do not have the systems and structures in place to safeguard pupils. They do not take their safeguarding responsibilities seriously enough. As a result, some vulnerable pupils at risk of harm go unnoticed and do not get the timely support that they need.

Leaders and governors must act to protect and safeguard pupils as a matter of urgency. ? Governors have breached their statutory responsibilities. They have not set out a clear vision, ethos or direction for the quality of education that the school provides to pupils.

They do not hold leaders to account with sufficient rigour. Governors have allowed safeguarding to be ineffective. They do not fulfil their duties under the Equality Act 2010 or ensure that the statutory guidance on relationships, health and sex education is followed.

This means that pupils are being failed. Governors must take swift action to carry out their statutory duties and responsibilities.Having considered the evidence, we strongly recommend that leaders and those responsible for governance do not seek to appoint early career teachers.

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