Section 48 - Church School Inspection
The National Church of England inspected our school on Wednesday 6 March and we are very delighted to have received our inspection report following our Section 48 SIAMS inspection. To some extent it mirrored the experience of our OFSTED inspection in March 2023 in which HMI summed up our pupils’ experience as ‘pupils love learning and achieve well’ and gave us only one area for improvement. OFSTED Report 03/23: https://shorturl.at/opGL3
The Section 48 inspection report celebrates this tremendous church school; its staff, its pupils and its governors. The inspector/s describe ‘Relationships are extremely strong’, ‘Pupils know they are unique, loved and nurtured and that the adults in school will listen to them and help’, and ‘Loving relationships within school are valued by parents’. A copy of the report is available here: SIAMS Report 06/24: https://shorturl.at/zGRS2
The report covers the following main areas:
How do pupils and adults flourish in the school? How does the curriculum reflect the vision? How does collective worship help pupils to flourish spiritually? How does the school’s culture enable pupils to be treated well? How effective is RE curriculum and what is the quality of religious education?
Inspector/s had multiple meetings including with school leaders and other staff, governors, pupils, and they observed a number of lessons, looked a pupils behaviour in class and breaktimes, and observed school worship. They also met with members of the community/church and with parents. There were two inspectors on site, one quality assuring the process, and they struggled to find development areas for the school, as you will note when you see the report.
We resulted in getting the judgement that is the highest of the possible options, a Judgement 1.
The possible outcomes of SIAMS inspections for schools have changed for Church of England schools across the country as a result of a change to the inspection process. There are no longer four grades. We cannot get any grades such as Excellent, Outstanding or Good that we used to get in the previous framework. The report says: 'Through its vision and practice, the school is living up to its foundation as a Church school and is enabling pupils and adults to flourish. (Judgement 1 (J1)).
The Areas for Development created towards the end of this inspection relate to two projects that we have recently started which is in itself a celebration of how our school continues to move forward:
- AFD 1 is about the project we have positioned ourselves in as one of ten national pilot schools since October '23 to trial and personalise some additional RE materials that enable Christianity as a World Faith to be further explored in the existing Blackburn Diocese RE Syllabus. This is through: https://www.cefel.org.uk/
- AFD 2 is about the new initiative we have created called Growing in Faith, started in February ‘24. It is led by Mrs Kirby and involves us gardening the allotments alongside those with special needs at Walton Lea, as well as other projects. More details about this initiative can be seen here as it evolves: https://www.st-margarets.warrington.sch.uk/learning/learn-faith/growing-faith-adventure
On behalf of the staff and governing body, we can confirm that whilst we are very proud of our achievements recognised by extremely good test outcomes and both inspection reports, we will continue to strive towards delivering our school’s vision and ensure all our children in St Margaret’s get the best possible education.
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Previously in 2016...
The school was very pleased to be awarded the judgement of OUTSTANDING in all four areas by a SIAMS inspector in December 2016.
- The distinctiveness and effectivenessof St Margaret’s as a Church of England school are outstanding.
- The school, through its distinctive Christian character, is outstanding at meeting the needs of all learners
- The impact ofcollective worship on the school community is outstanding
- The effectiveness of the religious education is outstanding.
- The effectiveness of the leadership and management of the school as a church school is outstanding
The SIAMS Report from December 2016 is shown below:
SIAMS SECTION 48 REPORT DECEMBER 2016
The link to our SIAMS page can be found here: