Hope School

133421 Unique Reference Number Liverpool Local Authority 328704 Inspection number 5 November 2008 Inspection date Sue Hunt Reporting inspector

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This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005.

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Special Type of school Community special School category 5–13 Age range of pupils Boys Gender of pupils Number on roll 36 School (total) The governing body Appropriate authority Mr M Cardin Chair Rohit Naik Headteacher 5 October 2005 Date of previous school inspection Naylorsfield Drive School address Netherley Liverpool Merseyside L27 0YD 0151 4984055 Telephone number 0151 4984868 Fax number

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5–13 Age group 5 November 2008 Inspection date 328704 Inspection number .

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This document may be reproduced in whole or in part for non-commercial educational purposes, provided that the information quoted is reproduced without adaptation and the source and date of publication are stated.

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Further copies of this report are obtainable from the school. Under the Education Act 2005, the school must provide a copy of this report free of charge to certain categories of people. A charge not exceeding the full cost of reproduction may be made for any other copies supplied. 2 of 10 Inspection Report: Hope School, 5 November 2008

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Introduction

The inspection was carried out by an Additional Inspector.

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Description of the school

This is a small special school for boys aged between 5 and 13 who have a statement of special educational need or are undergoing assessment because of their social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. Most pupils have additional learning difficulties over and above those that appear on their statement. In addition a great number of them have a history of disrupted schooling and poor attendance at other schools. About 25% of pupils are either mixed race or Black and about 75% are White British. A small number of pupils are children looked after by the local authority (LA). The school provides an outreach service for schools in south Liverpool. As part of an LA initiative the school has recently become a 'Change School' which means pupils will be trained in problem-solving skills that they can use through all areas of life. The school has gained the National Healthy Schools Award.

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Key for inspection grades

Outstanding Grade 1 Good Grade 2 Satisfactory Grade 3 Inadequate Grade 4 3 of 10 Inspection Report: Hope School, 5 November 2008

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Grade: 2

This is a good school with some outstanding features. Representative views from parents include, 'School is marvellous Ä can't thank them enough,' 'My son has come on leaps and bounds since going to Hope,' and, 'My son has attended eight different schools and Hope is the only school that has given my child a chance.' The school deserves its very strong reputation in the community. It is appreciated both for its work with its own pupils and for the work with other schools. A very wide range of links with welfare and support agencies make an excellent contribution to pupils' personal development. Pupils make good progress and achieve well partly because they are encouraged to want to learn. Pupils are treated as individuals and the praise and reward they are given for their achievements raises their self-esteem very effectively. The school values its pupils. Parents made a point of saying how much they like the telephone calls informing them of their children's

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Grade: 2

progress, and the DVDs produced which show their children's achievements. Procedures to safeguard pupils are firmly in place and policies are regularly reviewed to ensure that pupils are safe and healthy. The school provides exceptional care, guidance and support. The quality of teaching and learning is good overall and is sometimes outstanding. Teachers know how to motivate pupils very well. This results in pupils developing excellent attitudes towards learning and so they engage well in lessons. The school has established an outstanding and improving curriculum that is very rich and imaginative, and that meets pupils' needs effectively. Provision for literacy and numeracy is good and this helps to prepare pupils well for their economic future. Personal development is exceptional. The level of self-discipline that pupils develop is very impressive and improvement in behaviour is outstanding. Pupils quickly develop into well

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Grade: 2

mannered and thoughtful young citizens. They have an excellent understanding of healthy living. They grow their own vegetables and herbs for their school canteen. Pupils make an exceptional contribution to their community; visiting a local infant school every Friday to hear readers and helping the infants develop their own vegetable patch. Attendance is improving but is still an issue for a small minority of pupils. Leadership and management are good. The headteacher's strong leadership has been instrumental to the school's success, and he has worked hard since the start of the new school in 2003 to establish it as a centre of good practice. Senior management have established effective and rigorous target-setting systems across the school. However, the headteacher and senior management have not judged their results against similar schools nationally. The school has an active outreach team who are in great demand throughout south Liverpool. On the other

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Grade: 2

hand, reintegration of their own pupils into mainstream schools is not successful. One of the reasons put forward by the school is because pupils are happy and settled in an educational setting and do not welcome change. The governing body is very supportive. It holds the school to account well. The school has addressed effectively the issues raised at the last inspection. Its capacity for further improvement and the value for money it provides are good.

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What the school should do to improve further

■ Compare the achievement of pupils with that of similar pupils nationally to provide more information to evaluate the effectiveness of provision. ■ Improve reintegration into mainstream schools. 4 of 10 Inspection Report: Hope School, 5 November 2008

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Grade: 2

Pupils achieve well. Attainment on entry is usually low and often very low. This is because pupils' social, emotional and behavioural difficulties have interfered with their early learning. Increasingly, many pupils are also showing a greater than usual degree of learning difficulties. The school succeeds in helping pupils overcome these difficulties and through good teaching helps them to make good and sometimes outstanding academic progress. The school has recognised a weakness in writing and there are plans in place to rectify this. From low starting points most pupils make good progress to catch up. Many reach standards that are broadly average by the end of Year 8, when they leave. However, the school does not compare its outcomes with similar schools nationally. This limits understanding of the effectiveness of provision within the national context.

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Grade: 1

Pupils learn to understand their feelings and to control their impulses very well. This is evident in their outstanding behaviour in lessons and around the school and in their calm demeanour during lunchtimes and breaks. Pupils say that they enjoy school very much and more than one said that he never wishes to leave this school. The great majority of boys come to school whenever they can and while attendance is improved since the last inspection, because this is a very small school the attendance figures are significantly affected by the prolonged absence of a very small number of pupils. The school is doing all in its power to address this. Pupils understand the culturally diverse nature of society and respect the feelings and beliefs of others. They make a strong contribution to the community of the school and to its neighbourhood, and are proud of the work they do with the pupils in the local infant school.

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Grade: 2

Effective teaching brings about the good progress made by the pupils. Lessons are made interesting by the use of information and communication technology (ICT) that captures the attention of pupils. Teachers plan effectively making full use of the information that they gain from assessments of the boys' capabilities and attainments. This is an improvement since the last inspection. Classroom teams work very well together. Pupils are given the help that they need. Pupils are graded by ability in lessons and each boy has an individualised learning programme. This is helping pupils to achieve success. Behaviour is managed very effectively so that learning is not disrupted. Books are all well marked and pupils are clearly told what they are expected to learn, how they are getting on and what they must do to further improve. Sometimes teachers talk to the pupils for a little too long and pupils lose concentration.

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Grade: 1

The curriculum is outstanding. The school provides an extensive range of learning opportunities that are matched very well to individual needs. The development of pupils' personal and social skills is outstanding because it matches exactly the needs of the individual boy, and is woven 5 of 10 Inspection Report: Hope School, 5 November 2008 into all aspects of the curriculum. Pupils' awareness of health education is linked in with their Healthy Schools Award, and they recognise the advantages of healthy eating. A wide variety of extra-curricular activities include guitar and drum lessons, gardening and cooking, and special activity days such as 'Black History Day' enrich the curriculum. A great number of educational visits to places of interest such as museums, and overseas visitors to school, make significant contributions to cultural development. A number of residential visits to Shropshire and the

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Grade: 1

Lake District each year adds to pupils' enjoyment and development of their cooperative skills. Because of its innovative curriculum the school has recently been accepted as a 'Change School' and this will enable it to create a skills-based curriculum which will help pupils tackle problem solving to help them cope with their future lives.

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Grade: 1

The school is very calm, welcoming and harmonious. Pupils feel safe and well looked after. Parents are extremely positive about the school. Procedures to ensure health and safety are firmly in place. Support for vulnerable pupils and arrangements for child protection are clear and widely understood. The school is extremely successful in raising self-esteem and helping all pupils to develop their confidence as learners. Constant praise, reward and encouragement help pupils to make up for lost ground in their learning quickly and to improve their attendance and behaviour markedly. There are no exclusions in the school. All pupils are fully involved in setting challenging targets for academic improvement and personal development and they are given all the support and direction that they require to achieve these. Peer assessment and self-assessment is used to great effect in class and pupils enjoy monitoring each other for

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Grade: 2

The headteacher and the new senior management team have worked extremely hard since the last inspection and have made a marked impact on improvements throughout the school. Owing to long-term staff absences over the past 12 months, staff in middle management have not always been able to keep abreast with these developments. High quality supply staff have ensured that pupils have not been disadvantaged because of it. The headteacher and the team promote the personal development and well-being of all pupils very effectively. As such, equality of opportunity for pupils to achieve, especially in their personal development, is outstanding. Inclusion lies at the heart of the school's work; every pupil feels special. The school has an outreach team which supports pupils in mainstream education but reintegrating the older pupils into secondary mainstream schools is not successful. Members of the governing body have

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Grade: 2

tightened up their procedures and effectively carry out their role as a critical friend to the headteacher and his staff. The school development plan reflects relevant points for improvement including how to raise achievement in writing. There are good arrangements in place to evaluate teaching and ensure that improvements are made where necessary. There is now a well established system for tracking the progress of pupils across the curriculum over time. Community cohesion is outstandingly promoted. Use of resources is good, including ICT. Improvement since the last inspection is good and the leadership is very well placed to continue this. The school provides good value for money. 6 of 10 Inspection Report: Hope School, 5 November 2008 .

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Grade: 2

in the guidance 'Complaints about school inspection', which is available from Ofsted’s website: www.ofsted.gov.uk. 7 of 10 Inspection Report: Hope School, 5 November 2008

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Inspection judgements

School Overall Key to judgements: grade 1 is outstanding, grade 2 good, grade 3 satisfactory, and grade 4 inadequate

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needs of learners?

Yes Effective steps have been taken to promote improvement since the last inspection How well does the school work in partnership with others to promote learners' well being? 2 The capacity to make any necessary improvements

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Achievement and standards

2 How well do learners achieve? 3 The standards 1 reached by learners How well learners make progress, taking account of any significant variations between groups of learners 2 How well learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities make progress

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Achievement and standards

1 Grade 1 - Exceptionally and consistently high; Grade 2 - Generally above average with none significantly below average; Grade 3 - Broadly average to below average; Grade 4 - Exceptionally low. 8 of 10 Inspection Report: Hope School, 5 November 2008

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learners?

1 The extent of learners' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development 1 The extent to which learners adopt healthy lifestyles 1 The extent to which learners adopt safe practices 1 The extent to which learners enjoy their education 2 The attendance of learners 1 The behaviour of learners 1 The extent to which learners make a positive contribution to the community How well learners develop workplace and other skills that will contribute to their future economic well-being

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learners' needs?

How well do the curriculum and other activities meet the range of needs and interests of learners? 1 How well are learners cared for, guided and supported?

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and supporting all learners?

How effectively leaders and managers at all levels set clear direction leading to improvement and promote high quality of care and education 1 How effectively leaders and managers use challenging targets to raise standards 2 The effectiveness of the school's self-evaluation 2 How well equality of opportunity is promoted and discrimination eliminated 1 How well does the school contribute to community cohesion? How effectively and efficiently resources, including staff, are deployed to achieve value for money The extent to which governors and other supervisory boards discharge their responsibilities Yes Do procedures for safeguarding learners meet current government requirements? No Does this school require special measures? No Does this school require a notice to improve? 9 of 10 Inspection Report: Hope School, 5 November 2008

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Text from letter to pupils explaining the findings of the inspection

Thank you for making me so welcome at your school and for all your help and politeness during the inspection. It was great to see your good work in lessons and I enjoyed talking to some of you over lunch. Your school is good and it has some outstanding features. The school looks after you really well and adults help you in every way they can. Your attitudes and behaviour are outstanding. You love learning and this helps you to make good progress. You are taught well in lessons. There are many chances for you to learn about many different things in your different subjects. There are two things that I would want to see improved. First, I have asked your headteacher to compare what is achieved by you with boys in similar schools across the country. If this is done then the school will have better information on which to judge how well you are doing. Second, although I know how you enjoy attending Hope School it would be good for you to

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Text from letter to pupils explaining the findings of the inspection

think about and prepare yourself to be possibly reintegrated back into mainstream schools at some time in the future. Once again, thank you for the welcome you gave me, it made my visit really enjoyable. 10 of 10 Inspection Report: Hope School, 5 November 2008

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