Willow Vale School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 1 May 2024

Pupils' experiences of education are transformed at The Bridge School Sedgemoor. Most join the school following long periods of instability in education. Typically, they have developed embedded negative views about school and learning. However, from the moment they arrive, staff expertly get to know each pupil and their needs very quickly. Strong, positive relationships between staff and pupils are established. Pupils settle well and develop a sense of belonging. They experience success. As a result, pupils go on to attend better, achieve well and believe in themselves. Staff share high expectations of pupils. They work committedly to manage sometimes complex pupil behaviour. Pupils reengage in their learning because they increasingly want to do their best. Discriminatory or unkind behaviours are consistently challenged. Staff manage pupils' behaviour effectively by utilising strong relationships. Collectively, this helps to ensure pupils develop improved attitudes to learning. Preparation for the next stage of pupils' education is everyone's priority. Pupils benefit from personalised pathways into further education and employment. They receive useful and well considered careers advice that links to their needs and aspirations. Consequently, pupils typically move onto sustained education, employment or training.

What the school should improve

• The school has not identified the key concepts it wants pupils learn consistently across subjects. This means some sequences of work, particularly in the humanities, do not help pupils secure new knowledge because teachers are not able to identify where there are gaps. The school should identify precisely what they want pupils to learn and check how well pupils remember this across all subjects.
• The early reading curriculum needs further development. Not enough staff are reading experts and so there is variability in how pupils are supported to learn and apply their phonics. The school needs to ensure more staff are reading experts so that pupils can learn their phonics with greater accuracy and speed.

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