A HEAD teacher is "elated" after his school's grade was bumped up from 'requires improvement' to 'good' this week by the education watchdog.
Ofsted inspectors said Woodcote High School, in Coulsdon, required improvement after their inspection in 2013, but they upgraded the school to 'good' in a new report published yesterday (February 12).
After visiting last month, the inspection team said the school was now 'good' in all five categories examined – leadership and management, the behaviour and safety of pupils, teaching quality, pupil achievement and its sixth form.
Head teacher Mark Southworth, who has been in charge since 2003, said he was particularly pleased the school had improved in the context of Ofsted taking a tougher approach to inspections.
"A lot of schools, not just in Croydon, but in the country as a whole, are being downgraded, so we were really pleased," he said.
Particularly praised by the inspection team was the school's approach to integrating disabled students, and those with special educational needs, into school life.
A new disabled support unit has been built at the school since inspectors' previous visit.
Mr Southworth said: "Its quite moving, because a few of our disabled students spoke really well to the inspectors about how they really feel they've been accepted so much by the school that they just feel like they're no different to any other student, and accepted by everyone.
"The inspectors almost got quite emotional when they were feeding back to us about that.
"They said it was outstanding – unfortunately there isn't a judgement they can tick a box for that though. I'm really proud of that."
The inspectors, who were led by Clare Gillies, visited on January 21 and 22, and also singled out the school's GCSE results for being "well above average".
They also said teaching had improved since the last inspection, when the education watchdog highlighted maths and sixth form teaching as needing particular improvement.
Mr Southworth said the school was "on a steep learning curve" with the new sixth form at the time.
"We've gained a lot of experience now about how to work with students at A-level and that really is starting to show now, particularly in the number of students going on to university," he added.
And looking further ahead, Mr Southworth said he wants to build on the good report to push the school into the 'outstanding' category in the future.
"There are one or two subjects where we need to start getting more As and Bs, and that's what will get us to outstanding.
"The biggest one for us now is to make sure that the students we get the pupil premium for start to achieve as well as the rest of the students.
"We know what we need to do, the inspectors know we know what we need to do, we've got an action plan, so hopefully we can move on and get there."
