The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. As acting principal, you have worked quickly to improve the school and develop a strong and collaborative staff team. Your insistence on sharing responsibilities for leadership has ensured that the senior team know the school well and make a valuable contribution to school improvement. Pupils are offered good-quality learning and are making good progress. The caring and supportive ethos within the school shines through. Staff go the extra mile to make sure that all pupils receive the support they need to make at least good personal and academic progress. You have created a culture where positive relationships are the foundation of the school. Pupils clearly enjoy their school and are thriving. They talked enthusiastically about life in school and all the wider experiences they enjoy, including walking up Snowdon, mountain biking, golf and having rice pudding for lunch on a Wednesday. Since the last inspection, you have invested in resources to support pupils to regulate their own behaviour. Therapists are available to work one to one with pupils or in small groups, where they are helped to understand their feelings. They learn how to manage their emotions and, therefore, their actions. During the inspection, pupils expressed what they were feeling and made the right choices to keep themselves calm and safe, for example to explain that they were anxious and asking to sit in the ‘quiet space’ for a few minutes. Pupils are happy to sit together at break and lunchtime and chat among themselves. Some pupils prefer to sit and talk with the staff. The older pupils enjoyed some independent social time where staff supervised them from a respectful distance. Another area you were asked to improve at the time of the previous inspection was the quality of information collected following staff recruitment. These records are now thorough, of good quality and well maintained. You and the careers leader have begun to develop a whole-school approach to careers information advice and guidance, however, this is still in the early stages. Careers guidance and work-related learning is still predominantly focused on Year 11 pupils. Currently, there is a lack of breadth and depth in the key stage 3 careers and guidance programme. It does not fully provide pupils with the confidence to experience different options available to them, and to feel more informed and prepared for their post-16 provision. Pupils’ academic and personal progress is carefully monitored, so all staff know how well each individual pupil is progressing and can plan for the next steps in their learning. Pupils have extra help if required, such as one-to-one work or through purchasing specialist equipment. Although assessment information is used well to promote individual pupils’ good progress, leaders do not have a strategic overview. This means leaders and governors have a limited grasp of pupils’ progress over time or as groups, such as a key stage or year group. Leaders cannot compare the progress pupils make year on year, nor can they compare groups to national averages. Pupils arrive at the school with increasingly complex social, emotional and mental health needs. To respond to this, you have invested heavily in training the pastoral team to respond to these complex needs through, for example, one-to-one or smallgroup work. Improvement in the attendance and progress of those pupils who are persistently absent is an area that still requires attention. Safeguarding is effective. Leaders have taken effective action since the last inspection to ensure that safeguarding is a high priority for the whole school. Record-keeping is thorough and follows school policies and national guidelines. Leaders have ensured that all safeguarding policies and procedures are fit for purpose. There is a strong culture of safeguarding in the school. Consequently, pupils feel safe and well cared for and parents agree their children are safe in school. Since the last inspection, a newly appointed governor has taken on responsibility for safeguarding. She has completed an audit and has regular meetings with school safeguarding leads to ensure that the strong practice is maintained. The school is successful in helping pupils to understand how to stay safe in a range of circumstances, including online and e-safety. Personal safety is threaded through the curriculum, and topics are covered through small-group assemblies and one-toone sessions.