Rochdale Islamic Academy

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 3 December 2024

Rochdale Islamic Academy is a warm and friendly school. Staff forge positive relationships with pupils. This helps the school to create a caring and respectful atmosphere. Most pupils enjoy coming to school. They relish the strong friendships that they make. This helps pupils to feel a sense of belonging. Most pupils behave well. They respond well to the high expectations that staff have for their conduct. Pupils display focused and positive attitudes to their learning. As such, most classrooms are calm and purposeful. The school has high ambitions for pupils' academic success. However, the school's expectations for all pupils' achievement are not entirely realised. The school has not fully addressed the weaknesses in the design and delivery of the curriculum in some subjects. This limits how well some pupils progress through the curriculum and achieve in these subjects. Pupils are encouraged to build their confidence through a broad range of extra- curricular opportunities. Pupils enjoy taking up roles of responsibilities such as pupil mentors, reading leads and school councillors. This helps the school to establish a sense of community among pupils. Pupils relish opportunities to visit art galleries, theatres, museums and different places of worship. These opportunities expand pupils' knowledge of the wider world and better prepares them for life in modern society.

What the school should improve

• In some subjects, the curriculum design is underdeveloped. As a result, some pupils do not build on their subject knowledge as well as they should. The school should ensure that in all subjects, key knowledge is identified and logically ordered so that pupils know and remember more over time.
• In some subjects, teachers do not have sufficient expertise to deliver the curriculum effectively. This means that some pupils do not gain the depth of understanding of the subject content that they should. The school should ensure that teachers have the necessary knowledge that they need to design learning activities effectively to help pupils to achieve well.
• Teachers do not routinely check that pupils have secured their prior learning effectively. Sometimes, this means that teachers move onto new learning without addressing gaps in pupils' knowledge. This weakens how well some pupils progress through the curriculum. The school should ensure that teachers check what pupils understand so that misconceptions are quickly addressed before new learning is introduced.
• The school does not identify the specific aspects of reading that some pupils find more difficult. Consequently, pupils who struggle to read do not improve their reading knowledge as quickly as they should. The school should ensure that staff are equipped to diagnose the deficits in pupils' reading knowledge so that pupils can be better supported to read with fluency and confidence.
• The school does not identify pupils' additional needs well enough. As a result, some pupils with SEND do not achieve as well as they could. The school should ensure that staff receive the training that they need so that they can better recognise and meet the additional needs of pupils with SEND.
• The proprietor has not maintained sufficient oversight of the quality of the school's provision. Nor has it ensured that the standards are met consistently well. This has hindered how well weaknesses in the quality of education have been addressed. The proprietor should sharpen its monitoring systems so that it can ensure that the school's actions have a positive impact on the quality of education and that the standards are consistently met.

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