Elements Academy

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 4 February 2025

Pupils at Elements Academy have a mixed experience. Recently, the trust reset expectations across the school. Pupils say they have noticed improvements. Pupils now learn in three 'zones'. This helps the school to build a consistent staff team around each group of pupils. Pupils have a range of special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). The primary need for most pupils is social, emotional and mental health (SEMH). Staff manage behaviour incidents in a calm and consistent way. However, parents and pupils continue to raise concerns about behaviour in the school. Pupils say bullying does happen, but they are confident staff will deal with it well. Pupils talk about enjoying specific subjects. They also value positive relationships with key members of staff. However, pupils do not achieve as well as they should. This is partly because the curriculum is not consistently well taught. It is also because pupils' rates of absence are too high and they miss too much school. Pupils learn how to develop socially, including through dedicated lessons. Here, they gain knowledge about how to stay safe in the wider world. Pupils confidently explain their understanding of online risks and what makes a healthy relationship.

What the school should improve

• The school has not ensured that all staff have the necessary support with subject- specific knowledge when teaching outside of their specialism. This can limit how well the curriculum is implemented. The school should ensure that staff receive the necessary support to implement the curriculum well across a breadth of subjects, particularly in the secondary phase.
• Adaptations to the delivery of the curriculum are not consistently well matched to the complex needs of the pupils. Some pupils do not progress through the curriculum as well as they should. The school should ensure that staff develop expertise in a range of adaptive teaching strategies to meet pupils' complex SEND needs.
• The attendance of pupils at the school is too low and persistent absence is too high. Pupils miss out on too much learning. The school should ensure that the recent developments in the work of its attendance team, including with parents and carers and wider services, improve pupils' attendance and engagement in school.
• The school's oversight and record-keeping relating to pupils on temporary part-time timetables and alternative provision pathways is not as comprehensive as it should be. School staff lack clarity in their oversight of these pupils' quality of education and the timeliness of the support they receive. The school should further improve its strategic oversight of pupils' pathways and its approaches to collaborative working between staff teams.
• The school has gone through a significant period of turbulence over recent time. During this time, engagement with key stakeholders, including parents, has suffered. Leaders should ensure that their continued work to improve the school is supported by effective communication with all key stakeholders.

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