Maintained all-age schools
This page provides a summary of the key messages from our work in the sector during the academic year 2021-22. Click on the arrows for details of what’s going well and what needs to improve, along with links to resources for providers.
What’s going well
- In general, pupils are happy to be at school and show positive attitudes to learning.
- Pupils show care for others in the school and are mindful of how the pandemic has affected its community.
- In many schools, provision and interventions are often effective in bringing about improvements in pupils’ well-being.
What needs to improve
- Overall, pupils require more emotional and mental health support than before the pandemic.
- A few pupils’ engagement with their learning and their behaviour have been adversely affected by the pandemic.
- A minority of pupils lack self-confidence and struggle to work independently.
What’s going well
- Many teachers work together well to plan and implement a curriculum that considers progression across all phases.
- A majority of pupils are willing to contribute orally and offer extended responses when prompted.
- A few pupils display strong writing skills while writing effectively for different purposes and for different audiences.
What needs to improve
- In a few schools, there has not been enough emphasis on improving the quality of teaching when designing the curriculum.
- A few schools have not shared good practice in teaching effectively within and across schools to enhance experiences for pupils.
- External professional learning is often not specific enough to the all-age sector.
- A minority of pupils lack basic literacy skills, make frequent spelling and grammar errors and are not able to articulate their opinions fluently.
What’s going well
- Work to support staff and pupils to recover from the pandemic is going well.
- There is an increased focus on staff well-being.
- Team working and collaboration between staff are a particular strength, especially since the pandemic.
- Engagement and communication with parents are strong in all-age schools.
- Professional learning arrangements are particularly useful when they include the sharing of good practice in teaching internally or between schools.
- Collaborative work and mutual support between schools in the sector are a notable feature.
What needs to improve
- Often, leaders do not combine information from a range of sources to evaluate the impact of their work over time.
- Leaders’ detailed understanding of the standards of pupils’ skills and the quality of teaching is too variable. View resource.