Special needs school in Northampton still not meeting required standards after last year's inadequate rating

A private school for children with special needs in Northampton rated inadequate last year was still not meeting required standards when it was visited by the schools regulator in March this year.

Progress Schools, in Notre Dame Mews, was given the lowest possible grade by Ofsted after an inspection last July.

New senior leaders started at the school at the start of 2023 but Ofsted said lessons were still “chaotic” and “disrupted by uncooperative and poor behaviour”. Pupils were found to have not “gained knowledge, deepened their understanding or developed skills as well as they could”.

Progress Schools’ managing director said Ofsted had acknowledged some “improvements and progress” had been made at the school since July but there is “still more work to be done”.

The school has capacity for up to 50 children aged between 13 and 16 but was educating 25 at the time of the inspection. Pupils’ fees are between £12,500 and £32,000 per year.

Staff still had “low expectations of what pupils will learn and achieve” and their experiences in lessons “contributed weakly to their learning”. “They [did] not have sufficient meaningful opportunities to learn and make progress,” the report found.

The school’s curriculum was “not adapted well” to meet pupils’ needs if they had education, health and care plans. Though some senior staff had developed “some individual educational plans”, they were found to be “incomplete and generalised” and did not relate to the plans’ objectives.

Ofsted said pupils on leaving were “not prepared well enough for their next steps and future opportunities and experiences”, but it said the school had made improvements in the way it provided relationship and sex education and health education.

But it said pupils had “no opportunities…to learn about faith or cultures that are different from their own”. The inspectorate said the school’s “weak” risk assessment policy had not been implemented effectively. The school met health and safety policy requirements after weaknesses were found at the last inspection in July 2022.

“Our team has worked tirelessly to implement new systems and processes as quickly as possible during this academic year, which are starting to have a positive impact on the overall quality of our provision,” Progress Schools’ managing director Charlotte Barton said.

“We remain committed to providing the very best provision for our young people, many of which have behavioural, and social, emotional and mental health needs. This means that providing them with the most appropriate provision is key. As such, we are currently lobbying the government on the need to relook at their understanding of what Alternative Provision is, and the ways in which it is assessed.

“Whilst we welcome the feedback from Ofsted against the Independent School Standards, we also feel, like many schools out there, that the ways in which the standards are applied across all inspection frameworks needs greater flexibility, to allow for greater individual school context to be considered.

“We look forward to continuing that work and welcoming Ofsted back into our Northampton school in due course, when we are hopeful that they will further acknowledge the progress made to provide the best standards of education possible for the young people.”