PARENTS of pupils attending Wellington’s previously failing State secondary school have been told its ‘journey of improvement’ must continue.

Court Fields School headteacher Polly Mathews wrote to parents with an upbeat end of academic year message, 12 months after a turnaround in its fortunes

Ofsted inspectors last year rated 755-pupil Court Fields as ‘good’ in every category, after it had continually been branded as ‘requires improvement’ since 2016.

Ms Matthews told parents: “I underlined earlier this year the importance of continuing our journey of school improvement following our Ofsted visit in March, 2023, and our ‘Good’ report published last May.

“We have focussed on assessment, developing perseverance in student learning, subject pedagogy, continuing to refine our curriculum, and supporting our students both pastorally and academically.

“Next year, we will once again focus on our clear priorities, high quality adaptive teaching, ensuring all students are confident readers, student participation in learning and enrichment, and student/staff wellbeing.

“This is part of our three-year school improvement plan to ensure that our school continues to support the outcomes and ambitions of our students.”

Court Fields was part of the Castle Partnership Trust which also ran Wellington primary schools Wellesley Park and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, as well as Castle School, in Taunton.

The trust merged last September with Uffculme Trust, which ran Uffculme School and the village’s primary school, to form the Blackdown Education Partnership.

Mrs Matthews said the new trust gave all its member schools significant capacity in terms of staff training, recruitment, and retention, and school development.

She said: “In line with that, over the last few months we have had three very successful reviews, ‘Whole School’, ‘SEND’, and ‘Safeguarding’, conducted via the trust, and quality assuring our continued improvement as a school.

“Recruitment in schools is a challenging issue nationally, but I am very pleased to say we are fully staffed with specialist teachers for September.

“I am also pleased to say that we have only a small number of staff leaving us, including those on short-term contracts, wishing to move closer to home, relocating, or to enjoy a well-deserved retirement.

“Of course, those staff leaving, joining, and being promoted to new roles have an impact on our pastoral structure.

“We also have to fit part-time staff with others whose timetables match across the week.

“We have a number of changes in place in terms of tutors, to ensure that we provide the best support for our students, both this year and moving forward.”

Mrs Matthews said there would be some minor changes to lesson times when the new school year started in September.

She said: “Literacy underpins academic success in every subject and is fundamental for building fulfilling careers and rewarding lives.

“It is imperative we improve students’ literacy by exposing them to a range of high-quality challenging literature.

“As part of our successful reading strategy over the last two years, we introduced the tutor reading programme.

“This will be developed further over the year, utilising an additional time allocation with tutors.”