St Vincent's School - A Specialist School for Sensory Impairment and Other Needs

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 23 April 2024

Pupils are welcomed to St Vincent's School with a warm smile and a friendly greeting. They benefit from a culture that celebrates their strengths and talents. This helps pupils to feel valued members of the school community. Pupils enjoy caring and nurturing relationships with staff who know them well. They trust that there is always an adult available to help them if they are worried. Pupils are respectful of others and behave well around the school. They are quick to offer help to each other, such as guiding their peers back to class. Staff respond swiftly and sensitively to pupils' emotional needs. Pupils feel happy and safe. An impressive range of wider enrichment projects provide pupils with a strong sense of belief in themselves and a 'can-do' attitude. Pupils have opportunities to represent the school and to be positive role models for the visually impaired community locally, nationally and internationally. This ambition, however, is not matched with the same high expectations of what the pupils should achieve academically. Many curriculum subjects are still in the early stages of development. This means that pupils are not as well prepared as they could be for their next steps in education.

What the school should improve

• In several subjects across key stages 1 to 4, the school has not given sufficient thought to the essential knowledge that pupils should learn and in what order they should learn it. Consequently, some pupils do not achieve as highly as they could in these subjects. The school should finalise its curriculum thinking so that teachers have enough information to shape their teaching and enable all pupils to achieve well.
• Some staff do not use assessment information well to design learning which builds on pupils' prior knowledge. This means that some pupils have gaps in their knowledge and understanding. The school should ensure that staff have the support and guidance required to determine appropriate, clear and manageable next steps for pupils.
• The school and governors do not have sufficient oversight of the quality of the curriculum in several subjects. As a result, in these subjects, pupils do not learn as well as they should. The school and governors should check that these curriculums are delivered consistently well so that pupils can build on their learning and achieve well across the curriculum.

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