A look at Smestow Academy, Wolverhampton who are now in the top 10 of secondary schools.

Transcript

00:00Hello everyone, I'm Ian Chamberlain, Headteacher at Semesto Academy. I'm really proud to have

00:12been Headteacher here for the last two years. The school has been on an interesting journey.

00:17We took over the school when it was Semesto School in January 2023 and reopened it as

00:23Semesto Academy under the Matrix Academy Trust.

00:26The Matrix has come in and they've put those systems, just simple systems, made them consistent,

00:34made sure that all staff are on board and that the staff that have been here a long

00:39time are against that kind of structure and that has just had the biggest impact for me.

00:47The behaviour has changed quite a lot. People are less destructive in lessons so a lot of

00:52people are learning more. The teachers are really helpful. We've got, I think they're

00:57called LSAs, they help people who need more help in lessons.

01:03So the old school closed down so we're still awaiting our new Ofsted inspection but at

01:08the same time we're really, really proud of the achievements over the last two years where

01:12we've seen our attendance increase by over 6% to now be above national. We've seen our

01:18behaviour improve immensely and we've also, as a result of that, had some phenomenal outcomes

01:25last summer with our exam results where we saw our pupil progress scores go from, to

01:31become one of the most improved schools in the country.

01:33The atmosphere in the classroom is so much more positive that good staff can then actually

01:39deliver and teach and then of course the students respond to the content. They get that kind

01:45of success and everything just goes straight up.

01:49What helps as well is that Mr Chamberlain's here. We don't have a constant change of head

01:54teachers because normally there'd be one head teacher and then it would change the next

01:58week and obviously Mr Chamberlain's helped improve the school a lot by staying.

02:03If you could pin this down in terms of how this has come about, it's just been a relentless

02:08focus of hard work and parents and children and staff all working together. We've really

02:16focused on asbestos values, that's a real key thing to everything we do. We've had a

02:21real focus on behaviour and our high expectations with seven simple expectations. We look from

02:25children to actually teaching the behaviours they need.

02:28It's a great place to work, you rock up, you know you're going to have great classes, the

02:32kids are going to be receptive and engaged and that makes it a very nice place to work.

02:37We've also focused on looking at a real excellent personal development programme for our children

02:42where we offer some real effective pupil support services around that as well such as our pupil

02:48counsellor, our behaviour and pastoral mentors. And then lastly a real focus on reviewing

02:53our curriculum and making sure it's the right one for our context and our children where

02:58we've really focused on the asbestos teaching principles of how we impart that to be as

03:04high quality as possible for our children.