North Star 82°

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 19 September 2023

Pupils find sanctuary, safety and success at North Star 82°. Typically, pupils join following long periods of instability in their education. However, pupils benefit from skilled staff, who build strong, trusting relationships. Staff work hard to promote a sense of belonging. This helps engender a safe, and often calm, atmosphere. Learning is carefully planned to capture pupils' interest and help them to catch up. Consequently, pupils' experience of learning improves, and they quickly experience success. Staff are well trained to manage sometimes complex behaviour and attitudes. All pupils have special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Staff follow established policies diligently. They secure positive relationships effectively. Discriminatory or unkind behaviour is not tolerated. Collectively, this helps to ensure that pupils' behaviour improves significantly and they develop more positive attitudes to learning and school. Everyone agrees the school is a good place to be. Parents and carers are very positive about the difference the school makes for their children. However, despite relationships with parents being positive, more could be done to harness and involve them in their children's learning. This is reflected in pupils' individual plans, which are often too generalised.

What the school should improve

• Curriculum planning and teaching in some subjects is not as secure and consistent as in others. This means that pupils' learning is sometimes inhibited, because they cannot make key links between what they know in different subjects to enable them to achieve even more. Leaders need to ensure that pupils' learning is as coherent and at the same standard in all subjects.
• Pupils' individual plans are too general and difficult to measure impact. There is also a lack of opportunity for parents to make meaningful contributions to these. This means that the plans themselves do not add value to the strength of curriculum planning. Leaders should look to sharpen these plans so that identified targets are measurable and achievable and allow parents to support their children's learning in meaningful ways.

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