Clevedon School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

Clevedon is an outstanding school which provides excellent opportunities for students to thrive and develop highly effective skills and aptitudes. The school's focus on raising standards has brought about exceptional improvement over the last few years. Standards in English have been high with GCSE results being well above average.

In mathematics the strong focus on improvement has meant that these standards have risen significantly and are now above average. Hence attainment is above average and students make good, and often outstanding, progress. The school's excellent, accurate analysis shows that this momentum is due to continue.

Results at A level show that students in the sixth form are... well prepared for their next phase of education, including university, or for work. A major strength of the school is the excellent support for students whose circumstances make them more vulnerable. The school takes responsibility for a number of students who have had considerable disruption to their education, often because they have been excluded from a number of schools.

The support for these students so that they achieve well and all progress to either further education, training or work, demonstrates the school's excellent commitment to inclusion and to ensuring equality of opportunity. The belief that all can, and will, succeed is central to the clear ambition from the highly effective senior leadership team which is understood and acted upon by all staff. The quality of students' learning is good and often outstanding because of a combination of a highly motivating curriculum which meets the individual needs of students very well and excellent guidance and support.

The house system is used exceptionally well to motivate and enthuse students, along with engaging teaching. Lessons meet the needs of students very closely as work is matched to their abilities. The very strong emphasis on improving the quality of teaching and learning has meant that these have improved markedly and are now good.

The school has set clear expectations from staff for all lessons; a major success has been the great increase in opportunities for students to work independently, an area which was identified for improvement in the previous inspection report. The school has rightly identified that to ensure that the quality of teaching and learning is consistently at least good and more often outstanding, it needs to ensure greater consistency by reducing incidents when teachers talk for too long before students get down to work, and also to make better use of assessment so that students have a good understanding of the next steps in order for them to meet their challenging targets. The school has made excellent improvements to its specialist area of modern foreign languages.

It has worked very well with its partner primary schools and supported them in teaching French to pupils of all ages. Students now arrive at the school far better prepared to study languages. All students take at least one appropriate language qualification at the end of Year 9.

The provision for languages at Key Stage 4 has increased with students being able to study French, German, Spanish, Italian and Mandarin Chinese. This is one example of the excellent work the school does within the local community. Students have an excellent understanding of their area and also of many areas within the world, especially through the school's links through its specialist status.

However, students have a less well-developed understanding of life in multicultural United Kingdom. Staff know students very well and offer excellent care. As a result, students enjoy school and their behaviour is good.

Safeguarding procedures are of a very high standard and consequently students say they feel very safe. This judgement is also supported by the returns from the parent and carer questionnaires. Risk assessments in science have been fully integrated into schemes of work in line with the recommendation from the science inspection.

The school has been highly successful in making exceptional improvements in many elements of its provision, so that now it offers an outstanding curriculum and students' achievement is good. Staff share the ambition for continuous improvement and are not complacent, leadership is highly effective and overall there is an outstanding capacity to improve.

Information about the school

The school is larger than the average.

It has specialist status as a language college. The vast majority of students are from White British backgrounds. The proportion of students who speak English as an additional language is very small.

The proportion of students known to be eligible for free school meals is well below average. The proportion who have special educational needs and/or disabilities is in line with the national average but the proportion who have a statement of special educational needs is low. The school was recognised as one of the most improved schools by the Schools and Academy Trust in 2010 and it had a science subject inspection in February 2011.