Budmouth Academy Weymouth

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is an inadequate school School leaders and governors have failed to ensure that pupils receive an acceptable standard of education. Academic standards have declined rapidly in recent years.

Governance of the school is weak. Governors are divided among themselves. Relations between the governing body and the senior leadership team have broken down in places.

This loss of trust is a serious impediment to the effective governance of the school. Safeguarding is ineffective. Procedures for monitoring pupils who are on the school's roll but not currently being taught on-site are not robust.

Extended study leave is illegally used as an alternative to fo...rmal exclusion. Academic outcomes for pupils are very poor, especially for disadvantaged pupils. Teaching is not effective in promoting good progress, appropriate behaviour or the habits of successful learning.

Teaching is not challenging enough and pupils take too little pride in their work. Pupils' attendance is poor. The rates of persistent absence for disadvantaged pupils and those who have special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities are far too high.

Low-level disruption in lessons is common and gets in the way of learning too often. Middle leadership in the school is weak. It does not contribute enough to improving the quality of teaching or pupils' academic outcomes.

Leaders and governors are not monitoring the use of additional funding, such as the pupil premium, closely enough. This limits its impact. Leaders' monitoring of teaching places too little emphasis on the impact of teaching on pupils' progress over time.

The impact of teaching on improving post-16 students' progress is better than in the rest of the school. Nonetheless, the progress students make on A-level courses is consistently below the national average. The school has the following strengths The recently appointed principal has a very clear understanding of the school's current position.

Nonetheless, he has not had any time to have any significant impact on improving the quality of education provided by the school. In the sixth form, the centre of excellence and industrial liaison (CEIL) provides students with strong work-related learning. The school has a comprehensive and effective programme to develop pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

Information about this school

Budmouth College is a large secondary school with a big sixth form. The current principal had been in post for less than three weeks at the time of the inspection. The previous substantive principal was not in the school after December 2015.

In the interim, the school was led by two successive acting principals from among the school's senior leadership team. The school has specially resourced provision for up to 12 pupils in its Asperger syndrome unit. The school uses two alternative providers, Weymouth College and the Compass, a nearby pupil referral unit.

The school does not meet the government's floor standards at key stage 4. During this inspection, inspectors were aware of a serious incident involving a child who used to attend this school that had occurred since the previous inspection. While Ofsted does not have the power to investigate incidents of this kind, actions taken by the school in response to the incident were considered alongside the other evidence available at the time of the inspection to inform inspectors' judgements.

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