EXCELLENT behaviour by pupils at a special school has led to a significant improvement in a recent Ofsted inspection.
St Francis Special School in Fareham has been rated good with an outstanding rating for the behaviour and safety of pupils.
It’s an improvement on the last inspection when the school, for children aged between three and 19, was rated satisfactory.
The report said that the school has a calm and welcoming atmosphere and that teaching was consistently good at all key stages.
Inspectors said the staff highly value every pupil and give them all an equal opportunity to succeed.
But the pupils’ behaviour was the highlight of the report, with inspectors saying safeguarding arrangements enable children to feel extremely safe at all times of the day.
Headteacher Steve Hollinghurst said: ‘We are absolutely delighted. The school has done exceptionally well. It recognises all the hard work that the staff, the pupils, the parents and the support staff have done.
‘It’s good that we’ve been recognised for the work we’ve done to manage the behaviour of the children, to support them with very complex health and welfare needs as well. We are very pleased. The kids are well behaved.
‘They have got challenges but we have got them to be responsible for their own decisions. We help them and encourage them to control their own behaviour.’
And Mr Hollinghurst has praised the staff for all their hard work. ‘There is a really great improvement in teaching and learning,’ he said.
‘That’s the result of the new curriculum that we put in place which is extremely creative.
‘The teachers have worked exceptionally hard to put together appropriate schemes of work and activities to meet the very complex needs of the children that we have.’
Inspectors said that to become an ‘outstanding’ school, the quality of teaching must be raised. Mr Hollinghurst, added: ‘The next step is for us to increase the amount of outstanding teaching. We want to have as much outstanding teaching as we can across the school.
‘I am very ambitious to do that.
‘The children in our school deserve the very best. That’s what I want to do.’
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