Compass Community School Victoria Park

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 2 July 2024

Compass Community School Victoria Park is a school driven by its vision. This is to help pupils engage with education and overcome barriers to learning. Pupils have struggled to engage in education in the past and many have had negative experiences at their previous settings. The staff have significant expertise in helping pupils through a caring, therapeutic and highly personalised approach to education. This is a small school with a big heart. Bullying is not tolerated. Many pupils struggle to regulate their behaviour and emotions when starting at this school. Staff are skilled in helping pupils to understand and overcome these difficulties. They carefully build highly positive relationships with pupils, taking into account each pupil's individual needs and ways of learning. Typically, this results in pupils developing positive attitudes to school and towards others. Lessons are calm and purposeful. Teachers want and encourage pupils to do well. As a result, pupils work hard across the curriculum, supported by committed staff. The quality of work in pupils' books reflects their positive attitudes and the extent to which they want to do well.

What the school should improve

• The school tracks and challenges all pupil absences. However, levels of absence for some pupils remain too high, so they are not able to take full advantage of the curriculum on offer. The school should explore alternative ways to engage with pupils, parents and carers to improve attendance so that pupils get the best chance to be successful in their education.
• Occasionally, adults do not implement the curriculum as intended in terms of pedagogical choices they make or how they model expectations. This means that sometimes pupils get mixed messages about expectations and their work does not improve as well as it could. The school needs to develop teachers' and staff's understanding and practice so that agreed approaches are consistently adopted and pupils' learning is maximised.

Read the full Ofsted report (opens in a new tab)