Rhyddings

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 8 January 2025

With help from the trust, the school has raised its expectations of pupils' behaviour. This has helped to foster a more respectful culture than in the past. Typically, the relationships that pupils have with their teachers and peers are positive. Most pupils enjoy school. The trust has high expectations for pupils' achievement. Recent improvements in staffing and leadership at the school have helped to raise pupils' achievement in key stage 3. However, in some subjects, the key stage 4 curriculum is not designed and delivered successfully. This limits how well older pupils learn. Furthermore, a small minority of pupils' high absence rate means that they miss vital learning. This hinders some pupils from achieving as well as they should. Some pupils have begun to benefit from the recent improvements that have been made to the programme to promote their wider development. The school has started to organise activities that help pupils to learn about life in modern Britain. For instance, pupils celebrate and mark faith events at relevant times of the year. Some pupils relish their roles on the junior leadership team. These positions help pupils to feel heard and valued. Reading ambassadors enjoy supporting their younger peers to develop confidence when reading. However, these opportunities are not as rich or as broad as they could be to enable more pupils to take advantage of such experiences.

What the school should improve

• In some subjects, the curriculum at key stage 4 is underdeveloped. For instance, the essential knowledge that pupils should learn is not identified clearly. This limits how well some pupils secure their understanding of the subject content. The school should ensure that the key stage 4 curriculum identifies what pupils need to learn, and when this will happen, so that pupils can build on their knowledge well over time.
• Some teachers do not check and remedy gaps in pupils' knowledge as well as they should. This means that some pupils do not build a deep enough understanding of subject content. As a result, they are unable to understand more complex ideas as they progress through the curriculum. The school should ensure that teachers are equipped to design activities that help them to check and support pupils to gain a deeper understanding of the subject so that they can achieve well.
• The school does not diagnose and address older pupils' reading knowledge gaps as well as it should. This limits how well some of these older pupils access the curriculum. The school should strengthen its support for older pupils who struggle to read to ensure that pupils develop their reading knowledge so that they can access the curriculum and achieve.
• At times, teachers do not adapt teaching activities well to meet the additional needs of pupils with SEND. This means that some pupils do not access the curriculum as well as they could. The school should ensure that lesson activities are suitably adapted to meet pupils' additional needs so that they can achieve as well as they should.
• The programme to promote pupils' wider development is not as rich and broad as it should be. As a result, some pupils do not gain sufficient opportunities to expand their interests and talents. The school should ensure that its extra-curricular programme is strengthened so that more pupils take advantage of wider enrichment activities.
• The school does not identify and analyse the reasons for some pupils' absences closely enough. This means that, for a small number of pupils, absence rates remain high. The school should improve how it monitors and analyses the absences for these pupils so that the barriers that stop them from attending school are removed more effectively.

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