The Limes College

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 19 October 2023

Pupils mostly attend this school for a short period of time. In that time, they build positive working relationships with staff, feel safe and are encouraged to feel valued. The school is ambitious for all pupils to achieve all that they can. Parents and carers are positive about their children's experience here. Leaders prioritise improving pupils' behaviour and the impact of this work is reflected in the school's success in reintegration of pupils back to their mainstream schools or into new settings. Pupils are supported to understand their emotions and are taught strategies to help them regulate their behaviour for themselves. From the moment pupils join the school, they are assigned support for their personal development through a tailored curriculum. Pupils are helped to understand what may hinder their learning and what action to take. This is further reinforced by a carefully planned and sequenced personal, social and health education curriculum. Pupils are taught about relationship issues in an age- appropriate way, including keeping personal information secure and alerted to grooming and manipulation. Pupils are encouraged to stay mentally and physically healthy, to keep themselves safe in a range of circumstances, including online, and made aware of the dangers to health of alcohol and drug misuse.

What the school should improve

• Pupils in the secondary phase who join the school with significant weaknesses in their reading and gaps in their phonics knowledge are not helped to learn the phonics they need to read fluently and confidently. The school needs to refine the reading curriculum for secondary-age pupils who are weaker readers to enable them to build up phonics knowledge quickly and become fluent, confident readers.
• When curriculum thinking does not detail the subject content that pupils should learn or the order in which it should be taught, teachers are unclear about what they should teach resulting in gaps in pupils' knowledge. The school should ensure that curriculum thinking across all key stages specifies what pupils should learn, know and be able to do so that teachers know what to teach and pupils build up knowledge or skills securely.

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