St David’s High School is an inclusive caring community with a clear focus on equity and supporting pupils’ well-being. Pupils benefit from a broad range of support and most feel safe at school and know where to seek support if needed. Staff know their pupils well. The majority of teachers establish effective classroom routines and offer pupils suitable learning activities. In a very few lessons, pupils make strong progress, and teachers include skilfully planned activities that capture pupils’ imagination and use probing questions that encourage independent thinking. In a significant minority of cases, there are shortcomings in teaching that mean pupils make limited progress and often become passive in their learning. Too often, teachers accept brief and underdeveloped verbal responses to questions and these lessons lack challenge. A few pupils display negative attitudes towards learning, talking over the teacher and failing to listen respectfully. The school has recognised the importance of improving pupils’ writing skills and made it a whole-school priority. Overall, opportunities for extended writing are purposeful. However, the school’s provision for developing pupils’ speaking and advanced reading skills is underdeveloped. More than a half of pupils have weak numeracy skills, and they do not receive enough opportunities to develop these skills in mathematics and other relevant subjects. Too often, numeracy tasks lack sufficient challenge, limiting pupils’ skill development. In addition, there are insufficient opportunities for pupils to develop their Welsh-speaking skills in lessons and across the school. The headteacher has developed a strong sense of teamwork amongst staff and considers pupil and staff well-being carefully. Although leaders work well together, there is a lack of clear, strategic leadership and they do not hold staff to account fully. They do not have a sufficiently rigorous approach to gathering evidence from activities such as learning walks and book reviews and are therefore unable to plan for improvement effectively. While leadership has had a positive impact on communication with parents and pupils’ wellbeing, it has not had enough impact on the quality of teaching, the development of pupils’ skills and curriculum design.