Carisbrooke College has been praised by Ofsted inspectors for not letting the Covid lockdown affect pupils’ education.
Following a remote inspection last month, which was conducted due to the school’s ‘requires improvement’ Ofsted rating, inspectors found Carisbrooke and its leaders were taking effective action to provide education in the current circumstances.
At the time of the inspection, at the start of February, only a tenth of pupils were being educated on site, with most pupils engaging consistently well at home, learning the same as those pupils physically attending the school.
Maintained the momentum of improvement
Inspector Matthew Haynes said the school had maintained the momentum of improvement since the previous inspection, demonstrating its ‘ambition and determination to make sure pupils receive a good education’ despite the challenges in the last year.
In a letter to head of school, Karen Begley, Mr Haynes said certain pupils had fallen behind others, but the school was determined pupils would not lose out because of the disruption to their education and knew it was vital that they did not fall further behind, with a range of support in place for them.
Helping pupils catch up
When students returned to school in September, teachers and subject leaders adapted their plans to help pupils catch up with the missed learning.
Although the plans were in place to support the students, Mr Haynes said, the school had not yet evaluated the impact of the additional support to see what was working and what might need changing.
Extending KS3
The school designed a new curriculum across subjects, changing key stage three to last three years instead of two, and, according to Ofsted, did not allow lockdown to disrupt the delivery of it.
Special educational needs pupils were also said to be receiving the appropriate specialist support with those who would benefit the most attending school, including the Einstein Centre.
This article is from the BBC’s LDRS (Local Democracy Reporter Service) scheme, which News OnTheWight is part of. Read here to find about more about how that scheme works on the Island. Some alterations and additions may have been made by News OnTheWight. Ed
