The Orchard School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 24 January 2023

For many pupils, Orchard School is their first successful experience of education. Pupils who attend the school have typically experienced significant disruption to their education. Pupils flourish because leaders have high expectations and respond well to their individual needs. Leaders carefully consider how to support pupils to manage their behaviour and re-engage with education. Consequently, incidents are quickly resolved, and bullying is rare. Pupils feel safe. They know that staff are there to care for them. Strong relationships are at the heart of the school's work. Most pupils enjoy coming to school and attend well. Leaders expect pupils to give their best effort. Over time, pupils develop positive attitudes to learning. They try hard to meet leaders' ambitious expectations. Leaders support pupils to identify their long-term goals. They enable pupils to gain the experience they need to access further learning and to be successful. Pupils enjoy finding out about different career pathways and make realistic plans for the next stage of their education. Those pupils have spent longer at the school develop the self-belief that they can reach their goals. Pupils speak about their aims for the future with confidence.

What the school should improve

• The new approach to teaching early reading is in the early stages of development. Not all staff have received training yet. Some staff do not yet deliver early reading well enough. This slows pupils' progress. Leaders need to ensure that all staff have the phonics knowledge they need to support pupils to learn to read well.
• The offer for pupils' wider development is not as well thought out as it could be. There are limited opportunities to identify and develop pupils' talents and interests. Leaders need to further develop the offer they provide so that all parts of pupils' wider development are well supported.

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