Message to Parents following the Inspection
Message to Parents
As you are aware, during March this year we had a visit from Estyn. Below is a summary of their main evaluation.
Cefn Season Comprehensive School is a caring school where staff know pupils well and make them feel valued and safe. Pupils are welcoming and friendly, and many behave well. They benefit from the wide range of extra-curricular opportunities on offer and the pupils involved in the various Senedd groups value the opportunities they have to contribute to the life of the school. However, Estyn were very critical about our attendance levels. In fact, they said that this is in need of significant improvement. We need your support in addressing this.
Strong working relationships between staff and pupils are a feature of most lessons. In the majority of lessons, teaching enables pupils to make sound progress. In these lessons, teachers plan helpful, suitably challenging activities and monitor pupils’ progress well, providing useful verbal feedback.
The school’s caring ethos, where every child matters, is promoted successfully by leaders. There is a sound culture of safeguarding and valuable provision for pupils with ALN, such as the Year 7 nurture class. In light of the pandemic, leaders recognised the need to develop their own range of provisions to meet the changing needs of pupils. As a result, there is a broad range of provision to meet the wellbeing needs to pupils, particularly those who are vulnerable.
The headteacher and other leaders display a heartfelt commitment to the school and its community and have been successful in promoting the well-being and safeguarding of pupils.
The Secondary Education Nurture Centre (SENC) provides a safe, constructive environment for pupils with significant social, emotional and mental health needs. These pupils develop useful skills and positive attitudes to learning at the centre, and they generally attend well. Staff in the centre provide a bespoke curriculum for each pupil and work effectively with external agencies to support them.
Estyn have recommend for us to show further improvement with some aspect of our work, including; our desired outcomes for pupils when teaching and assessing; refine our systems of evaluation, again to gain the desired results; a slight adjustment in our curriculum in relation to PSE and Welsh key stage 4. However, the most significant area in need of improvement is attendance. We as a school agree with this and ask for all families to support us in making this improvement, after all, if your child is not in school they cannot learn.
The Parent’s Overview or the full report will be available through the Estyn website.
Estyn Inspection Explained – A Parent’s guide
We have a new approach to inspection in schools and Pupil Referral Units across Wales.
Our inspection reports will no longer include summative gradings (e.g. ‘Excellent’, ‘Good’ or ‘Adequate’). Rather than focusing on a grading, our reports will detail how well providers are helping a child to learn.
A key overview of findings will be included in the report headline focussing on a school’s strengths and areas for development.
We will also produce a separate report summary for parents which will allow parents to access the key information they need about an inspection quickly.
Our new approach aligns with the personalisation of the new curriculum for Wales. Our inspections will also involve more in-person discussions, placing less emphasis on achievement data.
We believe our new inspection approach will make it easier for providers to gain meaningful insights that help them to improve without the spotlight on a judgement.
There’s no change to the statutory categories of special measures and significant improvement. We’re keeping Estyn review and we’ll also continue to share innovative or effective practice.
In response to feedback, we’ve reduced the notice period for inspections from 15 to 10 working days. Over the next few years, we will be working with partners and stakeholders to gather views as we look to further evolve our inspection framework, including moving towards more regular inspection across providers.
How we inspect
We firmly believe in making inspection a positive experience for everyone working in education and training. Just like every teacher, every support staff member, and every school leader, learners matter most to us.
We’ve consulted with many stakeholders over the last few years to develop inspection arrangements that support renewal and reform in Welsh education.
We piloted these arrangements in schools and PRUs in spring and summer 2022.
The way we think about inspection − our mindset − helps us to:
- ensure the best for all learners
- offer leaders, teachers and support staff the chance to contribute professionally and constructively
- share what we’ve seen from across Wales to support improvement
Our mindset:
Estyn’s approach to inspection is:
- Fair and impartial – this means that we work to be independent, objective and balanced. We are robust and consistent in our work. We weigh the evidence and its significance to provide an honest, credible and accurate view of the provider’s strengths and areas for improvement.
- Supportive – we work to guide providers to implement improvements that benefit learners. We encourage innovation and recognise good intentions. We are friendly but always professional in our approach. We support educational reform. We work hard to develop meaningful relationships with providers and local and regional organisations.
- Reflective – we are open-minded. We listen to a wide range of stakeholders and reflect on their responses. We are thoughtful, measured and careful. We plan opportunities to think carefully about the inspection findings and to discuss them with others in the team.
- Transparent – we are well informed and communicate clearly, directly and succinctly. We use efficient and effective inspection methodologies to respond to the provider’s unique situation. We plan inspection activity and report on strengths and weaknesses in ways that reflect the particular circumstances of each individual provider. As a result, our actions promote trust and respect.
The Principles of Inspection
Inspection teams work according to a number of key principles. They:
- take a learner-led approach to inspection
- always focus strongly on the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning
- consider everything in the ‘what’ and ‘how’ we inspect guidance documents, but only report on the key strengths and weaknesses
- focus each inspection on the specific provider and adapt their approaches accordingly
- use a range of tailored inspection methodologies and approaches that are bespoke to the provider’s unique circumstances, in order to evaluate the breadth of the provider’s work robustly and fairly
- adopt a constructive approach that makes the interaction with the provider a professional learning experience for their staff and the inspection team as a whole, for example in taking suitable account of the impact of the recent pandemic
In addition, inspectors will:
- ensure that inspection is responsive to the needs of all learners
- ensure that evaluations are secure, reliable, valid and based on first-hand evidence
- involve the provider fully in the inspection process, including the opportunity for the provider to select a nominee
- use the provider’s improvement priorities as the starting point for the inspection and to identify key areas for investigation in order to make evaluations on the validity of its findings
- include peer inspectors in the inspection process
- keep to a minimum any requirements for documentation and preparation by the provider
- gain the perspective of learners and other stakeholders
- apply the principle of equality for Welsh and English to all our inspection work
Distribution of the inspection report
The report and parent’s/carers summary will be published on 25 May 2023. Within 10 working days of the delivery of the report, you must inform every registered parent or carer of every registered pupil of the report’s publication and its availability on Estyn’s website. In addition, you must provide, on request, single copies of the report, free of charge, to any persons living within a radius of three miles of the school. The governing body must also make reasonable arrangements for the report to be available for inspection by any member of the public who wishes to see it. If requested, you must provide a hard copy of the report to any person and in such cases you may charge a fee (not exceeding the cost of supply).
Schools and PRUs should ensure that the existence of the report and summary is widely known. Therefore, you may wish to share links on your school website and social media platforms. In schools and PRUs where there are parents or carers whose first language is neither English nor Welsh, it will be for the governors to decide whether it is desirable to have the report and summary translated into other languages.
Message to Parents
As you are aware, during March this year we had a visit from Estyn. Below is a summary of their main evaluation.
Cefn Season Comprehensive School is a caring school where staff know pupils well and make them feel valued and safe. Pupils are welcoming and friendly, and many behave well. They benefit from the wide range of extra-curricular opportunities on offer and the pupils involved in the various Senedd groups value the opportunities they have to contribute to the life of the school. However, Estyn were very critical about our attendance levels. In fact, they said that this is in need of significant improvement. We need your support in addressing this.
Strong working relationships between staff and pupils are a feature of most lessons. In the majority of lessons, teaching enables pupils to make sound progress. In these lessons, teachers plan helpful, suitably challenging activities and monitor pupils’ progress well, providing useful verbal feedback.
The school’s caring ethos, where every child matters, is promoted successfully by leaders. There is a sound culture of safeguarding and valuable provision for pupils with ALN, such as the Year 7 nurture class. In light of the pandemic, leaders recognised the need to develop their own range of provisions to meet the changing needs of pupils. As a result, there is a broad range of provision to meet the wellbeing needs to pupils, particularly those who are vulnerable.
The headteacher and other leaders display a heartfelt commitment to the school and its community and have been successful in promoting the well-being and safeguarding of pupils.
The Secondary Education Nurture Centre (SENC) provides a safe, constructive environment for pupils with significant social, emotional and mental health needs. These pupils develop useful skills and positive attitudes to learning at the centre, and they generally attend well. Staff in the centre provide a bespoke curriculum for each pupil and work effectively with external agencies to support them.
Estyn have recommend for us to show further improvement with some aspect of our work, including; our desired outcomes for pupils when teaching and assessing; refine our systems of evaluation, again to gain the desired results; a slight adjustment in our curriculum in relation to PSE and Welsh key stage 4. However, the most significant area in need of improvement is attendance. We as a school agree with this and ask for all families to support us in making this improvement, after all, if your child is not in school they cannot learn.
The Parent’s Overview or the full report will be available through the Estyn website.