Standards and Quality Report 2022-23

This report will inform you of the school’s progress and achievements in the last session and let you know about our plans for 2023-2024. I hope that you find it helpful and informative.

Billy Burke

Head Teacher

September 2023

Our School

Renfrew High School, originally formed in 1908, is a non-denominational secondary school serving the town of Renfrew and surrounding areas. The pupil roll in session 2022-23 was 841.

The vision for the school is ‘Learning, Achieving and Working Together’ and our shared values are ‘care, fairness, respect and trust.’

Key Strengths of the School

We undertake a wide range of robust self-evaluation activities throughout each school session. This identifies the following key strengths:

  • A positive culture of wellbeing, equality and inclusion
  • Leadership of school improvement at all levels
  • High quality personal support for learners
  • Positive trends in attainment and opportunities for wider achievement

Successes and Achievements

We provide a high quality learning experience for our children and young people through the learning and teaching provided by teachers, the personal support every pupil receives, and the rich curriculum experience on offer (including extra-curricular activities). We are recognised as one of the most successful schools in the country in promoting wellbeing, inclusion and equality.

We recognise the success of our learners in a variety of ways in classes, clubs and activities, for example by one-to-one praise, department Awards, social media posts and House Points. We also celebrate achievements at Pupil Awards Events where families and friends are invited along to share in the success.

Many pupils at Renfrew High achieve excellence in attainment, in qualifications and other Awards, and in areas personal achievement, such as sport, culture and the arts.

As a school we enjoy many successful partnerships and have been recognised with various School Awards:

  • Gold Award – Renfrewshire’s Nurturing Relationships Approach
  • Gold Award – School of Sport
  • Gold Award – LGBT Youth Charter
  • Unicef Rights Respecting Schools Award
  • SCQF School Ambassador Award
  • Eco Schools and Fairtrade Awards

Improvements Last Session

We made very good progress in our improvement priorities last session We focussed on:

  • enhancing learner pathways and targeted interventions to raise attainment of identified cohorts and subjects
  • embedding the refreshed curriculum rationale across BGE and senior phase, enhancing the offer of wider achievement opportunities and development of skills for learning, life and work

As a result of this we:

  • offer a wider range of academic and vocational courses and qualifications at SCQF levels 4-7 (such as Craft Mathematics, NPA Enterprise and Employability, NPA Business and IT, Lab Skills, Practical Electronics)
  • provide more ‘bespoke’ curricular pathways for learners with particular interests and needs
  • increased pupil participation in wider / personal achievement, including our cluster P6 and P7 pupils
  • maintained a high level of attainment in many comparator measures, and raised attainment in various measures when compared to the previous year (in particular S4 level 5 Awards and S6 level 6 Awards – 2023 data)
  • achieved our highest level to date of pupils achieving 5 or more awards at level 6, which includes Highers, in S5 (2023 data)
  • achieved our highest level to date of pupils moving on to positive destinations (2022 leavers)

Next Steps

We will continue to strive to improve in all we do to maintain and enhance the high quality of education we provide for our children and young people.

We engage in year-round self-evaluation activities by analysing data, monitoring practice and seeking views. We consulted the school community and identified the following improvement priorities:

  • Further enhance learner pathways and targeted interventions to raise attainment of identified cohorts and subjects
  • Improve wellbeing, equality and inclusion of our learners
  • Continue to embed the refreshed curriculum rationale across BGE and senior phase, enhancing the offer of wider achievement opportunities and development of skills for learning, life and work

Access our School Improvement Plan for 2023-24 here.

Pupil Equity Funding

Our school receives Pupil Equity Funding (PEF) to provide targeted interventions in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing to close the poverty-related attainment gap. This funding enables us to provide additional interventions to those which were already planned.

Our self-evaluation identified a need to increase staff capacity to lead and deliver the interventions required for individuals and groups. The enhanced staff roles include extra capacity in the following:

  • DHT (leadership of attainment challenge and data analysis)
  • PT Pupil Support (to reduce caseloads and allow for increased one-to-one HWB support for pupils)
  • Additional transition teacher (literacy, numeracy and HWB targeted supports)
  • HWB Coach (School of Football programme)
  • Mindfulness Coach (for targeted groups and peer-led training)
  • Librarian (enhanced literacy support and targeted literacy project ‘Diary of a School year’)
  • Teaching staff in-class support for targeted pupils (literacy focus)

As a result of this work we have evidence (data and qualitative feedback) which shows increased:

  • staff confidence and capacity to identify and deliver supports in literacy and numeracy
  • pupil confidence and attainment of targeted groups (literacy and numeracy)
  • attendance, engagement and MHWB of targeted pupil groups
  • family engagement and partnership working

We plan, monitor and review this work via our Attainment Challenge Governance Board, which has staff, pupil and parent representation.