Hill View Academy

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 12 July 2023

Hill View Academy is a school that has gone through a period of rapid transformation. Throughout school, the 'R' of respect is highly visible through the way pupils interact with each other. Pupils are surrounded by adults they know care deeply about them and want the best for them. Leaders' ambitions for pupils academically and socially are beginning to be realised more consistently. Pupils enjoy coming to school. They enjoy being in lessons and learning with, and alongside, each other. They build strong relationships with adults in the school. Relationship building has been at the heart of what leaders have developed and improved in the school over the recent past. These secure relationships mean that pupils feel confident to share concerns with adults, and to ask for help when they need it. If bullying does happen, pupils rightly have full confidence in staff to deal with this and address it. Leaders know that for pupils to be successful, pupils need to be in school. Attendance has been a challenge for several years. Leaders have worked to improve attendance for all pupils. This has made a difference, particularly for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). However, some of the strategies for identifying families and pupils who need support around attendance need further development.

What the school should improve

• Pedagogy in some foundation subjects is not securely embedded. As a result, some activity choices and do not give pupils the best chance of achieving the ambitious end points of the curriculum leaders have designed. Leaders should continue to support teachers to develop clear pedagogical approaches relevant to each subject they teach.
• Leaders' system for increasing attendance and reducing persistent absence, while making a positive difference, is not as rigorous as it could be. As a result, barriers that prevent some pupils from attending school as often as they need to are not quickly identified. Leaders should ensure that their systems for monitoring and improving attendance for all groups of pupils are highly responsive, pro-active and designed to quickly identify the barriers to attendance for pupils at risk of becoming persistently absent.
• The early years curriculum is not clearly enough defined across the seven areas of learning. As a result, there are missed opportunities in adult interactions and in provision to develop and enhance children's learning. Leaders should ensure that the early years curriculum is clearly defined with the knowledge, vocabulary and skills that leaders wish children to benefit from, beginning from their time in Nursery to when they leave the Reception Year.

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