The Ramsey Academy, Halstead

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 24 September 2024

At the Ramsey Academy, pupils like and respect their teachers. Staff provide strong support. This includes for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). If pupils have any concerns, they feel confident telling staff. The school is a safe place. Recently, pupils have benefited from raised expectations of what they can achieve. They now learn an ambitious curriculum. Pupils produce high-quality work, such as beautiful artwork. They learn what they need to move successfully on to their next steps. Behaviour is inconsistent. The majority of the time, pupils behave well and focus in lessons. However, at times, there is noisy and unsettled behaviour. This frustrates pupils who want to learn. Breaktimes are mostly orderly. Pupils are polite and friendly, such as opening doors for adults. Yet behaviour around the site can sometimes be unsettled. Some bullying happens. It gets addressed by the school, but in some instances it persists. A lot of parents have concerns about behaviour. The closure of parts of the site has disrupted pupils' experience of school. This has not been the school's fault. There has also been some instability in staffing. These issues have affected behaviour. Staffing has now settled.

What the school should improve

• Pupils in the early stages of reading do not get the quality of support they should. This means they are not given the tools they need to become more confident readers and this has an impact on their learning. The school needs to put in place an effective programme of support for the weakest readers.
• Teachers do not always check pupils' understanding thoroughly in lessons. This means that gaps in learning are not addressed as quickly or well as they might be. The school needs to ensure teachers get the guidance and support they need to check learning successfully.
• The school does not deal effectively enough with the underlying causes of misbehaviour. As a result, pupils' misbehaviour tends to recur. The school needs to teach pupils more successfully why positive conduct is important so that pupils learn to manage their own behaviour better.
• Some pupils do not engage as much as they could with the school's extra-curricular offer. This sometimes leads to a lack of buy-in from pupils into the wider life of the school. The school should enhance its extra-curricular provision so that there is a deeper engagement from pupils and a greater sense of community.

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