Connah’s Quay High School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

In recent years, the school has had a number of different headteachers in a short space of time. These changes have had an impact on the school's capacity to maintain a consistent approach to improving key aspects of its work.

Despite this, leaders have fostered an inclusive ethos and developed a range of strategies to support pupils' well-being. The recently appointed new headteacher has a clear vision for the school's future and is quickly gaining an understanding of the strengths and areas for improvement in the school's provision. In general, pupils are positive about their school experience and value the support that is provided.

However, a few pupils feel that issues such as bullying are not dealt with well enough, a...nd a minority do not feel that the school's approaches to managing behaviour are consistently fair. Although membership of the senior leadership team other than the headteacher has remained relatively stable during recent years, over time, their roles have become unclear and unbalanced. This hampers their capacity to secure improvement and makes it difficult for them to be held to account fully.

In addition, systems to evaluate the school's provision and plan for improvement are not robust or precise enough. This has led to leaders at all levels having an overgenerous view of the school's performance. As a result, leadership has not had sufficient impact on, for example, the quality of teaching or pupils' attendance, engagement and progress.

In the majority of cases, teaching is suitably effective, but pupils are not always challenged enough, which limits the progress they make. The school has beneficial provision to support pupils with additional learning needs and those for whom English is an additional language. However, it does not have a coherent strategy for developing pupils' skills in literacy, numeracy, information and Welsh, or their digital skills.

Recommendations R1 Refine the roles and responsibilities of senior leaders so that they are equitable and enable them to carry out their roles effectively and be held to account for securing improvement R2 Strengthen processes for self-evaluation and improvement planning R3 Improve teaching and assessment in order to challenge and engage all pupils R4 Strengthen provision to improve pupils' attendance, engagement and attitudes to learning R5 Strengthen provision for the progressive development of pupils' skills in literacy, numeracy and Welsh, and their digital skills What happens next In accordance with the Education Act 2005, HMCI is of the opinion that this school is in need of significant improvement. The school will draw up an action plan to show how it is going to address the recommendations. Estyn will monitor the school's progress about 12 months after the publication of this report.