Finham Park is a highly inclusive school where everyone is valued and expectations are high for pupils to achieve well. Pupils and staff embody the school’s values, which include humility and kindness. Relationships between pupils and staff are warm and respectful. Pupils speak positively about the support they receive from staff and enjoy their learning.

Pupils feel safe and say they are happy in school.

Pupils welcome the broad range of subjects they can study. For example, the school specialises in a breadth of modern foreign languages, including Mandarin Chinese. Pupils speak positively about the opportunities to continue at least one modern foreign language to GCSE.

Students in the sixth form are exceptionally positive about their learning experiences and the wider opportunities the school provides. The school has rapidly developed its ambitious curriculum in the sixth form. Sixth-form teachers engage students in challenging and independent learning. This enables students to achieve highly. Students make a significant contribution to supporting the school, including through student leadership roles. Students benefit greatly from this exceptional provision.

Finham welcomed back Christopher to this week. About 80 colleagues from across the region from across primary and secondary phases to discuss how to improve our way of teaching students reading.

He is the author of The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading and Primary Reading Simplified. He is an experienced teacher, school leader and consultant, who delivers professional development for schools, trusts and ITT providers on the subject of evidence-informed reading and curriculum development. He also works part-time as a member of Ambition Institute’s learning design team where he co-designed their NPQ in Leading Literacy.

What stood out was the need to expose pupils to as many different texts and opportunities as possible so that they can better understand inference and make predictions. (Like behaviour, unless we teach students how to behave, we are assuming they have an inherent and basic knowledge of the rules around behaviour). In reading comprehension, if students do not have a basic knowledge base for the world around them, then there is little point in teaching them how to infer or predict as they simply just lack the building blocks to demonstrate that skill.

During the visit, the students explored the technical aspects and benefits of electric cars including the new Citroën ë-C3 and Citroën AMI. They posed questions on sustainability and how it is integrated into automotive engineering to Citroën’s UK Managing & Marketing Directors. The media team were blown away by how articulate and confident our students from Years 7, 8 and 9 were in discussing and critiquing the vehicles with adults that they had only just met.