Pencalenick School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 7 May 2025

Pupils at Pencalenick School talk with pride and enthusiasm about the staff and what the school offers them. The school's dedication to building strong, nurturing relationships supports pupils to feel safe and build trust. This creates a calm, settled learning environment where staff foster pupils' confidence and sense of identity. Pupils show respect and kindness towards each other. While there is a clear focus on successfully developing pupils socially and emotionally, the school's academic offer is not having the same impact. The curriculum lacks a clear structure. Pupils do not achieve as well as they should or meet the expectations that the school has for them. This is a priority of the recently established leadership team. The school has much to offer pupils to prepare them for their next steps, those in their immediate futures and into adulthood. There is a rich variety of choices for pupils to challenge themselves and develop their independence and resilience. The school responds to pupils' interests as well as deliberately introducing them to new experiences such as the orchestra, sailing, the Jubilee Challenge and volunteering for roles to support the day to day running of the school. Many parents and carers describe the positive difference the school has made to their children's well-being and development.

What the school should improve

• The school's curriculum is not sufficiently developed. Important knowledge is not identified. It is therefore not clear what should be taught and when. Pupils do not securely learn the knowledge that they need across subjects. Furthermore, the systems to check pupils' progress through the curriculum are not linked closely enough to the subjects that they are designed to check. At times, this can hinder pupils building new learning successfully. The school should develop a well-sequenced and coherent curriculum in all subjects so that pupils can build securely on prior learning and be fully prepared for their next steps.
• There is not a whole-school shared understanding of the expectations about how the academic curriculum is delivered. This includes consideration for how pupils learn most successfully and the most appropriate learning activities to support this. Consequently, pupils' academic success is not as strong as their social and emotional learning and development. The school should ensure that its expectations for its academic offer are more widely understood, and that staff have the expertise to fulfil these well.
• The assessment information that the school gathers about each pupil is not used as well as it could be. This hinders the quality of education that pupils receive because they do not benefit fully from the knowledge that the school has about how well they are learning and developing. The accuracy and purpose of the information that the school gathers and collates needs to be strengthened, so that opportunities to support pupils to achieve as well as they can are in place.

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