Estyn Report letter to Parents Mountain Ash Comprehensive School
As you will be aware Mountain Ash Comprehensive School had a school inspection by Estyn in November 2018.
Please find below a summary, taken from the report, which gives a flavour of some of the judgements about the school. The full report can be accessed via the Estyn Website.
“Care, Support and Guidance is Good.” This was one of the judgements from Estyn, the school inspectorate service, following a visit to Mountain Ash Comprehensive School in November 2018. The inspection report states that “Mountain Ash Comprehensive School is an inclusive and caring community that provides encouraging and helpful support to its pupils. The school is working hard in creating a culture of ambition framed around the vision that ‘Every pupil will succeed.’ Mountain Ash Comprehensive School’s supportive and inclusive ethos has a beneficial impact on pupils’ personal development and wellbeing. Most pupils are courteous to visitors, staff and their peers. Many engage and behave well in lessons and the majority of pupils make sound progress in their learning. However, a minority of pupils are not sufficiently resilient in lessons, a few do not always behave maturely in class or respectfully as they move around the school. Teaching and assessment have many strengths, although overall there is too much variation in the quality of this provision”
The report also states that “The headteacher communicates a clear vision for the school that every pupil can succeed. The senior team work well together to realise this vision and this has contributed effectively to improved outcomes in 2018 for pupils, particularly at key stage 4.”
Under the new Inspection framework, Estyn make judgements on 5 areas which include Standards, Wellbeing and Attitudes to Learning, Teaching and Learning experiences, Care, Support and Guidance and Leadership and Management. Mountain Ash Comprehensive School was judged as Good for Care, Support and Guidance and Adequate and needs improvement (which means that strengths outweigh weaknesses, but important aspects require improvement) in the other four areas.
Estyn will review the school’s progress.
The school will draw up an action plan to address the recommendations for improvement from the report which include improving the progress that all pupils make in lessons, including the development of their literacy and numeracy skills; improving pupils’ resilience in learning; improving the quality and impact of self- evaluation and improvement planning; improving the quality of teaching; improving communication and engagement with parents and managing finances robustly to address the budget deficit.
The school is pleased with the report overall and the Senior Leadership Team, staff and Governors look forward to working more closely with the wider school community and parents to further improve the life chances of our young people.
S J Evans Headteacher