Sherwood Hill's evaluation (SEF) 2024-25

Sherwood Foundation School is a member of the Sutton Education Trust - a collaborative group of schools in Sutton.   

Sherwood Hill Campus is the autism only campus of Sherwood Foundation School. It is a large autism campus with 91 students on roll which is significantly above PAN for the school building’s capacity which was previously stated at 72. This year the campus has only grown by 1 student however has reduced by 1 student by the end of the year.  

Sherwood Hill Campus is built to meet the needs of autistic pupils with severe learning disabilities and additional complex needs including additional neurodivergence (eg ADHD), communication difficulties and many pupils who need highly specialist support when distressed or dysregulated to maintain their wellbeing and reduce the risk of harm to themselves or others.   

The school continues to grow as one school with a joint dedication to the mission and values, led by the whole school senior leadership team and executive headteacher, whilst the individual campuses are encouraged to develop pedagogy and support strategies in a way that works best for their specific cohorts. Sherwood Hill has invested in this, this year with autism specific training such as the curiosity approach.  

The complexity of need at the school has increased notably in recent years which is compounded by being over PAN and the lack of growth in space to meet these needs. The campus is also reviewing ongoing best ways to meet the needs of our diverse cohort as an all through school. While most of our pupils are from Sutton (our home LA), we have a number of pupils who travel from our neighbouring boroughs including Croydon, Merton, Kingston and Surrey.   

In addition to a team of highly qualified teachers and teaching assistants, well-being practitioners, a team of specialist therapists - OTs, Speech Therapists (bought in externally from Cognus but overseen by our in house therapy lead) and additional therapies including a Music Therapist, Play and Art therapist, all work in a transdisciplinary manner to ensure appropriate support for all pupils.

• Sherwood Hill Campus has had some changes within its leadership throughout the academic year 2024 - 25. These changes have led to some experiential structures within wider leadership which will continue to be evaluated into the year 2024 - 25 in an ongoing conversation regarding development of senior and wider leadership capacity.  
• At our last inspection in May 2024 (Section 8) the school was recognised as continuing to provide a good standard of education to its pupils and that safeguarding was effective. In the last section 5 inspection in 2013 the school was graded as good in all areas. These back to back good inspections recognise a sustained high quality of education that is provided by the school and a foundation from which to continue to develop and improve on our journey to excellence. 
• The school has a unique relationship with the LA commissioned service for therapies and has invested significant time and money in creating a joint way of working that ensures its pupils get the intervention, expertise and support they deserve.   
• Recruitment within the current national picture has been a huge challenge for the school over the past five years, however this year the campus has been able to recruit new teachers, and teaching assistants whilst promoting growth for staff within the organisation to ensure staff retention.

Areas to improve: 

1. The school’s curriculum for pupils who can access more formal learning is not as well set out and sequenced as for the other pathways. This means that some pupils who are ready for more formal learning do not make as much progress as they could. Leaders should complete the process of implementing the new curriculum. They should ensure that the essential knowledge that pupils need to learn over time is set out for all pathways 

Progress made:  

As the last inspection was one year ago the school has made some steps towards the area of improvement laid out within the Ofsted inspection. The Hill Campus, along with its counterparts have completed work to explore a redefining and streamlining of its pathways. The campus now has three clearly defined pathways which will come into effect in the year 2025 - 26.  

We have also begun a multi year project to evolve our curriculum. This is seeking to specifically address the stretch of learning for our pupils on all pathways. It will also seek to address the breadth of our curriculum so that our children are able to experience the same breadth of subjects as their mainstream peers.  

Curriculum parties (a transdisciplinary set of colleagues), are working together to adjust, develop and create new aspects to our curriculums to ensure learning for all pupils is relevant, meaningful and interesting. 

End of term PLPs and end of KS outcomes are tracked and monitored to ensure that pupils are progressing well and interventions (individual or whole school) can be made swiftly where necessary.  The robust assessment process culminates in excellent transdisciplinary reports (parents comment that they give them a true picture of strengths and weaknesses and that we “know” their children well). A suite of assessment methods are used to ensure highly accurate baselining (Vineland) and give a holistic view of the pupil at the right level including our PMLD pupils.   

The school is ambitious for all pupils and is not afraid to continue developing current assessment processes in the pursuit of further accuracy and robustness.  This is illustrated in the current PLP and end of KS outcomes where pupils are achieving well across the campus in their termly PLPs and achieving highly in KS outcomes at the Hill. 

End of Summer Term Data: 

Note: Average PLP achievement was: 85.1% 

Analysis: 

End of Key Stage Outcome Data: 

More information and data can be found in our assessment progress overview on request.

Leaders have ensured that:  

• The curriculums are well planned, innovative, broad and balanced and carefully sequenced to meet the individual needs of the pupils within each pathway, key stage and across the school as a whole 
• Assessment and target setting is strong and underpins the highly individualised learning programmes and clearly defined pathways ensuring high levels of progress. 
• Ambition for all pupils is high and this can be identified and demonstrated through the high-quality curriculum, teaching and learning, transdisciplinary practise, specialist wellbeing offer and target setting.  
• The school has an excellent reputation for supporting and enabling very complex children who may present behaviours of concern  or who have highly complex medical needs, to feel safe to learn and succeed.  
• A strong values of listening, enabling, accepting, respecting and nurturing (LEARN) underpins the school’s excellent collaborative working which in turn raises ambition and opportunity for all.  
• The wellbeing of all students is rightly emphasised and prioritised and subsequently the behaviour of students is exceptional ensuring much greater progress and positive future outcomes. 
• The social, moral, spiritual and cultural development of students is very good and the culture of safeguarding is strong and well embedded.

Leadership and governance 

• 3 years of consistency of a Head of School with a clear vision  
• Stable wider leadership team with one new wider leader joining supported by experienced wider leader colleagues.  
• Leadership team has worked closely with the governors to ensure they are well informed about the school operationally and strategically including a successful governor day held at the campus.  
• Due to various factors there has been inconsistencies with the assistant headteacher role throughout the year where best mitigation has taken place.  
• Going into the new academic year a new interim assistant head has been appointed.  
• Wanting to continue to work on ways to work with the governors including finding ways to increase governor link visits.  

Good  

Curriculum  

• Following through the 3 year topic cycle that teachers have planned towards meaning a breath of coverage.  
• Curriculum INSET days has ensured appropriate reviews of current curriculums and the creation of the new assessment process to assess against individual subject areas including literacy and numeracy.  
• A new framework for primary and secondary has been created following on from the past two years of work and evaluation.  
• Development of new pathways which are campus specific and represent the needs of our learners more accurately.  
• Roll out the new framework for primary and secondary which supports teachers further in ensuring a breath of coverage.  
• Roll out the new framework for post-16 and evaluate the impact of the new accreditation.  
• Roll out of the new pathways to all staff.  

Good  

Developing teaching 

• Inset training on numeracy and teaching of pre-number concepts for all staff.  
• Roll out of the STA training to support understanding of operational and teaching specific runnings of the school.  
• Curiosity training for staff  
• Attention Autism 2 day course booked for the next academic year  
• Half termly teacher practice sessions to begin next year to improve teaching and learning.  
• Peer observations to be encouraged termly across the whole school.  
• Moving away from traditionalist lesson observations to encourage meaningful feedback which represents what is happening in the classroom accurately.  
• Lead of post-16 to be booked onto the ASDAN training.  
• Training specifically for teachers on writing risk assessments.  

Good 

Achievement 

• Strong data from Autumn and Summer against short term targets.  
• Spring data impacted by a bereavement within the school.  
• Strong link in data and an absence in one of the three disciplines (teacher, OT, SaLT)  
• To have secure teachers in each classroom.  
• Training specifically for teachers on target setting.  
• Roll out of new POST-16 accreditation to ensure our eldest pupils leave school with an accreditation.  

Good 

Behaviour and attitudes  

• Shift in the culture of understanding stress behaviour and self-reg.  
• Increase in sleuth reporting but does remain an area to build on consistency.  
• LEARN tracker in its second year is now creating a holistic tracker of pupils' time at Sherwood which has been supportive to all staff understanding risks.  

Good 

Attendance  

• Attendance across the school is 87% which is on par with the SEND schools nationally.  
• Attendance for Sherwood Hill is 93% which is significantly above the national average.  
• The main trends in attendance appear to be either linked to learners who are on roll but are not being educated by us, unmet health needs, and unmet social care needs impacting families capacity to support their young people to attend school.  

Outstanding 

Personal development and well-being  

• Well-being team at the Hill’s capacity increased with interventions taking place to support identified pupils.  
• We do well continually in personal development including end of term trips, residentials etc. including both primary and post-16  
• Next year introducing a secondary residential so that all departments in the school can access a residential setting.  
• Robust RSHE curriculum which is implemented well by teachers and supports our pupils well across all ages.  
• Increasing our communication with parents around topics being covered as part of statutory RSHE/RE lessons.  
• Good use of Primary sports budget to support access to a well-rounded PE/PD and well-being education including music therapy, external dance company, climbing and caving, and inclusive cycling.  
• A new swim teacher was hired this year to support pupils accessing and learning how to swim.  

Outstanding 

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion 

• Big push in all of our students being able to access the community where they are able to begin to advocate for themselves and develop their independence.  
• Working with our local community to understand and advocate for our pupils, e.g. using AAC for communication when buying something at a shop. This will continue into the next year.  
• Next year a training for our transport providers to ensure positive approaches for journeys into and out of school.  
• Developing our staff's understanding of inclusion and diversity with anti-racism training.  
• Developing teachers' understanding of inclusive practice and how this can be implemented into the classroom without it being tokenistic.  
• Big push on staff understanding the different protected characteristics and their intersectionality.  

Good  

Safeguarding  

• Local authority audit which was very positive. They identified that we have lots of good processes linked with safer recruitment, monitoring of safeguarding and following up and ensuring the pupils voice is heard within safeguarding.  
• Bettering our online checks and ongoing work to improve and streamline our single central register monitoring processes.  
• Increase in a wide variety of staff using my concern effectively and understanding who to report concerns too.  

Outstanding  

EYFS 

• Outstanding EYFS practice being delivered with all pupils making good progress.  
• EYFS teachers are really competent in passing on up to date EYFS information so that all staff understand the different processes and assessment.  
• Outreach work with well-being with the nurseries to support pupils needs outside of the school.  
• Next year to increase the outreach work with local nurseries alongside well-being staff.  
• Next year to reintroduce moderation across schools in the local area.  

Outstanding  

Post-16 

• Residential attended this year for 1 night which was really successful  
• Interviews happened this year within school for pupils.  
• Communication has happened for next year for seek potential work experience placements.  
• Introduction of a new accreditation to be rolled out next year with close monitoring and evaluation.  

Good