The school was visited by two Ofsted inspectors on Wednesday 8 March 2006. Notley was selected to be part of an Ofsted trial of a shortened inspection process for high achieving schools.

The Inspectors spent the day observing lessons, meeting with staff and students and analysing other information about the school. We have now received the inspection report and we are delighted with the inspectors’ findings. The opening section on Overall Effectiveness of the School states the following:

“Notley High School is a good school with some outstanding features. Pupils and staff are rightly proud of their school. The school is accurate in judging its overall effectiveness as good.

Good leadership and teaching have enabled good standards to be achieved. The school is giving appropriate attention to improving the quality of teaching within and across all subjects so that all teaching matches the best of that already being provided. The ongoing improvement of the assessment data is also helping to increase pupils’ progress. The staff work very well together and provide a good level of care for all pupils. Pupils’ personal development is good and pupils enjoy coming to school. All pupils benefit considerably from an outstanding curriculum that includes a wide range of learning opportunities. Good progress is made by pupils with learning difficulties and disabilities.

Very effective partnerships have been developed with other institutions and agencies. The school is right in giving priority now to ensuring all pupils and parents feel fully involved in the work of the school.

This inspection confirms the judgements made by the school and endorses the actions being taken by the school to secure further improvement. The school has made good progress since the last inspection and provides good value for money”.

A great deal of work has been done over many years to improve all areas of school life and we are delighted with this external confirmation of our success. As well as describing the curriculum as outstanding the inspectors also described pupil behaviour as outstanding. As you know, we have worked hard over many years to insist on high standards of behaviour and we are particularly pleased with Ofsted’s recognition of our success in this area. The inspectors also found that the way in which the school works in partnership with others to promote pupils’ well-being is outstanding. All other areas of the school were described as good and is some cases good with outstanding features. I would like to thank all the staff, students, parents and governors who have contributed to this on-going process of school improvement. I would also like to thank parents for completing and returning the Ofsted questionnaire issued prior to the inspection. We will, of course, now begin work on the areas of further improvement identified in this latest Ofsted Report.

On Monday of next week we will send out the full inspection report to all parents along with a letter to pupils setting out their key findings.