College receives rave report card (From Gazette Series)

College receives rave report card

A BEREKELY school has been celebrating this week after a successful Ofsted report.

The Vale of Berkeley College was graded a Good (level 2) for its overall effectiveness by Ofsted inspectors who visited the school between March 14 and 15.

In the report published this week, inspectors said: "The school provides good value for money.

"Vale of Berkeley College provides a good education for its students. The school's own evaluation of its effectiveness underestimated the positive effect of some of its policies and initiatives."

In all of the six main categories - achievements and standards, personal development and well-being, teaching and learning, curriculum and other activities, care, guidance and support and leadership and management - the school was marked as Good.

Inspectors said they were particularly impressed with the school's management of anti-social behaviour, the improvement in the quality of teaching, the improved provision of ICT because of the school's technology college status and the support pupils receive.

Headteacher Aidan Farrell said he and his staff were happy with the inspectors' comments.

He said: "We are very pleased with the outcome of the report and see it as a vindication of the hard work of staff and children over the last few years.

"We are becoming increasingly popular with parents and children who are attracted by the idea of attending a small secondary school with high standards and where each child is known by name by every member of staff.

"The lead inspector remarked 'we're pretty impressed with this place'."

The school's sixth form did receive criticism for teaching a too narrow curriculum. The post-16 facility, due to close next year, received an overall satisfactory rating (Grade 3) but Mr Farrell said staff had expected such a mark.

He said: "The sixth form facility is slowly being closed and will be officially closed in 2007. We do still provide a high standard for our post-16 students though."

The Ofsted report gave the Vale of Berkeley College three areas to improve in before its next inspection in four years. The school was told to improve standards of attainment at Key Stage 4 especially in mathematics and science, to ensure the quality of teaching and learning is consistently good in all departments and to improve attendance of those students who do not attend regularly enough.

The Vale of Berkeley College was recently placed in the top 100 of improving schools nationally in a table based on sustained improvement between 2002 and 2005.