From the Head on the Inspection Report:
I am delighted to be able to provide you with the formal report following our recent inspection in May 2024.
To provide some context, Independent Schools are inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI), regulated by the Department for Education (DfE). Whereas previously schools had a regulatory compliance inspection and a quality of education inspection, these have both now been combined into one inspection format.
The new inspection framework places the responsibility on the school’s leadership and management and governance to actively promote the wellbeing of pupils at the centre of ISI’s evaluation of the school.
The inspection focuses on safeguarding across all aspects of school and on the following four sections:
Section 1: Leadership and management, and governance.
Section 2: Pupils’ education, training, and recreation, to include pupils’ outcomes.
Section 3: Pupils’ physical and mental health and emotional wellbeing.
Section 4: Pupils’ social and economic wellbeing and contribution to society.
Inspectors look for what genuinely happens and not what schools tell them happens. They consider a range of connected evidence, including school records and by confirming the context of what inspectors are seeing, hearing and reading on inspection.
The biggest change is how the reports are written. There are no longer gradings, but instead refer only to something as being ‘good’. The focus is more on data and whether standards are met or not. Schools will then have action points if they have not met the Independent Schools Standards and the regulatory requirements. And all schools now have recommendations on things they could change / improve or introduce.
I am delighted with our report as it recognises so many of the great things we are doing as a school. I am thrilled we have no action points at all and only two recommendations which relate to how we use our data and which we already had on our development plan to review. We had conducted and continue to conduct extensive self-evaluation and we have extremely high standards, so I am ecstatic at having only two recommendations in areas that are known to us.
I am most grateful to the wonderful team at Holmewood, (teaching, admin and support) all of whom have contributed to these excellent outcomes. The children should also get a special mention; it was they who were inspected as much as the adults and the systems, and, as we knew they would, they shone!
It is as we have always believed; the children at Holmewood achieve a variety and plethora of excellent outcomes and they develop in such wonderful ways. Extraordinary lives truly do begin at Holmewood.
We would love to hear from you and invite you to contact us for any queries you may have. You can reach us on 01892 860000, via email at admissions@holmewoodhouse.co.uk or by filling out this contact form to request a callback.
