Highfields Academy

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 8 October 2024

Pupils are polite and thoughtful. They are proud to play their part in making sure that everyone is welcome in their school and that nobody feels left out. Pupils help to make the school a happy place to be. Pupils are respectful to each other and to adults. Their behaviour around school is calm, safe and considerate of others. For example, pupils are keen to walk 'wonderfully' along the corridors so that they do not put others at risk. Pupils' positive conduct helps to create a calm and industrious atmosphere throughout the school. The school wants pupils to succeed academically, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). It has designed a curriculum that has raised expectations of what pupils can achieve across a broad range of subjects. Pupils typically work hard and listen attentively to their teachers and to each other. By the time that they leave the school in Year 6, pupils are well prepared for the challenges of the key stage 3 curriculum. Pupils enjoy helping others. Those who represent their classmates as junior governors are proud of their roles. Pupils relish taking part in the clubs on offer to them. This is helping them to explore a greater range of interests than in the past.

What the school should improve

• Some teachers do not deliver some aspects of the curriculum consistently well. This makes it harder for pupils to learn and recall key knowledge when they need it. The school should make sure that teachers are equipped to support pupils to build up a secure body of knowledge across the curriculum.
• In a few subjects, the school's assessment strategies are underdeveloped. This sometimes hampers teachers from identifying and addressing pupils' misconceptions and gaps in knowledge quickly enough. It also makes it more difficult for pupils to learn new information. The school should ensure that approaches to assessment in these remaining subjects support teachers to check how well pupils have learned the knowledge in the curriculum.
• The school does not make sure that the additional needs of some pupils with SEND are accurately identified. This means that some pupils with SEND struggle to access the curriculum because their teachers are unsure how best to support them. The school should equip teachers with the knowledge that they need to recognise and meet the differing needs of pupils with SEND.

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