Ofsted inspected the school on 28 and 29 January 2025 and judged us Good. The report was published on 12 March 2025.
What inspectors found
Inspectors described a caring ethos and a personalised approach to learning, and found the environment relaxed and informal. They noted that our values – gratitude, respect, integrity and teamwork – run right through the school.
They reported that the curriculum is broad and coherently sequenced, and that learning is matched closely to each student’s ability. They noted that students benefit from teaching one-to-one and in small groups, that staff encourage resilience, and that lessons are designed to help students concentrate.
Inspectors also recorded that students gain relevant qualifications, receive effective careers guidance, take part in sport, and learn life skills including cooking and travelling independently.
What we were asked to improve
We publish this because you can read it in the report anyway, and because a school that hides its weaknesses is not one you should trust with your child.
Inspectors identified two areas for development. The first was that enrichment beyond the classroom was limited, and that students needed more opportunity to apply what they had learned in real-life settings. The second was that staff needed more structured professional development so that teaching could be strengthened further.
What we have done since
Enrichment and real-life learning
Enrichment is now built into the curriculum rather than added on around it, and it is compulsory.
Students have worked alongside the fire service, learning to operate firefighting equipment and, more to the point, learning to work as a team under instruction. They have spent a day at Humberside Airport, checking in, reading timetables and working out costs in the shops — functional skills applied in a real place rather than practised on a worksheet.
In summer 2026 we ran a five-week programme with the charity Run With It at Flemingate Shopping Centre in Beverley, tied directly to our functional skills qualifications. Students met a number of employers there and learned about jobs they had never considered — which matters for young people whose sense of what is open to them has often narrowed a long way.
Sessions ran weekly during the school day, so no student was excluded by transport or by what happens after school. For a young person who has spent months out of education, being somewhere unfamiliar, with unfamiliar adults, and managing it, is often the point of the exercise.
Staff development
We have strengthened subject expertise by recruiting specialist teachers, including in maths, so that students are taught by people with deep knowledge of the subject rather than by generalists covering it.
Alongside that, we have commissioned external consultants to deliver in-depth professional development for the staff team, focused on the specialisms involved in helping students with additional needs access the curriculum.
Read the full report
You can read the inspection report in full on Ofsted’s website:
- Standard inspection report, January 2025 (PDF)
- All our Ofsted reports, including the pre-registration inspection
You can also download our copy of the report:
Registration
- URN: 150449
- DfE number: 813/6017
- School type: independent special school
- Age range: 11 to 16, mixed
Our registration details are also published on the Department for Education’s Get Information About Schools service.
All school policies are in our policy library.
