The Altus School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 19 January 2022

Gloucester and Forest Alternative Provision is a school where pupils' needs are identified quickly, understood and valued. Staff share high aspirations for all. Everyone seeks to secure pupils' positive learning experiences. Pupils study personalised programmes. They re-engage in their learning because they know staff care about how well they do. Pupils benefit from positive relationships with staff. Staff promote care, tolerance and respect. Discriminatory or unkind behaviour are not tolerated. Pupils feel that bullying is very rare. They say that when it happens, 'staff are on it'. Consequently, pupils feel safe and experience success. Pupils go on to attend better, achieve well and believe in themselves. Pupils can present with complex and difficult behaviour. Nevertheless, leaders and staff have created a calm and orderly environment. There are clear expectations and routines. When pupils do present with challenging behaviours, staff know how to respond. This helps pupils to manage their own feelings and refocus on learning. Pupils improve their behaviour rapidly over time. As a result, pupils develop positive attitudes to their learning, maintain better relationships and recognise their own self- worth.

What the school should improve

• Leaders have significantly improved the ambition and breadth of the curriculum. Staff give pupils choices about when they learn different elements of the curriculum. However, some pupils' attendance, although improving, is not as high as it should be. Other pupils' choices limit their access to parts of the curriculum. Leaders are not able to assure themselves that pupils get the same learning from the developing curriculum. Leaders should strengthen the processes they use to assure themselves that pupils have full access to the curriculum.
• The implementation of the curriculum is increasingly effective. Pupils are learning the curriculum with much greater security. However, some pupils lack resilience when asked to write in subjects other than English. Leaders should consider how to build greater resilience among pupils to write across the curriculum.
• Leaders have improved the books available to early readers. Many pupils are benefiting by taking home books they can read independently. However, for those in the very earliest stages of reading, books do not match the sounds pupils know as well as they could. Leaders should accelerate their plans to ensure all pupils can take home books that directly link with the sounds they can use to decode independently.

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