THE trust which sponsors Bordon’s Mill Chase Academy is “rapidly improving” the quality of education for its schools.

“High expectations, robust challenge, strong levels of accountability and well-targeted support are leading to widespread improvement for schools” in the University of Chichester Academy Trust, an Ofsted review has found.

The review, published last week, reports that university trust staff share a strong belief that each school is unique and should develop with its own identity. At the same time, they recognise that robust systems are necessary to support the work of leaders and ensure appropriate consistency between schools.

The university trust has schools in Hampshire, including Portsmouth, and West Sussex. Of the 10 schools in the trust, four schools were inspected in July as part of the focused review. Three were full inspections and one was a monitoring inspection.

Along with the inspections, telephone discussions were held with headteachers of five other schools in the trust. Discussions were also held with senior leaders, trustees, academy-improvement partners and two representatives from the university’s Institute of Education. A range of documentation was scrutinised.

Mill Chase had an official Ofsted visit in October last year - the first inspection since becoming an academy under the Chichester University trust in 2013. It was rated “good”.

Principal Paul Hemmings is now committed to making the school “outstanding”.

Ofsted South East Director, Chris Russell, said: “This trust has shown that strong management, close collaboration between senior leaders and other partners and clear lines of accountability lead to improvement. At the same time each school in the trust is considered as unique and provided with high quality, individualised support.

“While more support is needed to provide a wider curriculum, it is also pleasing to see that pupils are able to enjoy the opportunities and extra-curricular activities that the University of Chichester Academy Trust is able to offer.”

Other advantages schools gain from being part of the trust include having improvement specialists from the university’s Institute of Education to provide targeted support for pupils alongside training for school staff in the trust.

Regular artists in residence have been arranged for schools and the university’s new engineering and digital-technology park has offered opportunities to enrich the curriculum.

Elsewhere, inspectors found that schools in the trust are able to access well-qualified trainee teachers due the partnership arrangement with the university’s teacher-training course. In many cases, trainees go on to secure full-time employment in trust schools.

Headteachers also recognise that opportunities to mentor trainee and newly qualified teachers help schools to retain experienced staff. As a result, schools are fully staffed, despite regional difficulties in recruiting well-qualified staff.

A new Mill Chase Academy, constructed in Budds Lane, is in the pipeline. All being well, it will open in September 2019. The current school building, in Mill Chase Road, will then be demolished.

Ofsted’s review recommended the trust should:

n Ensure outcomes across the trust improve further, including for disadvantaged pupils and the most able.

n Provide sharper and more consistent reporting to the board of trustees about the achievement of pupils in the trust’s schools, to enable more robust challenge.

n Promote improvement in pupils’ outcomes across the wider curriculum, by exploring how schools can access specialist support, including from the university.

n Implement plans to strengthen school-to-school support by sharing best practice and increase the deployment of the strongest practitioners in trust schools to provide support for colleagues in other schools.

Mr Hemmings said: “Mill Chase was the second school to join the academy trust and we are pleased to have gone from strength to strength since then.”

He added that when Ofsted inspectors visited the school last autumn, they reported that “senior leaders have established an ethos of high expectation and aspiration which is central to the life of the school” and that “pupils are safe, happy and well looked after”.

Teachers are “passionate about doing their best for the pupils they teach and pupils are making increasingly good progress.”

Mr Hemmings added: “In our first inspection as an academy, we were judged as being ‘good’ in all areas and I am determined to ensure that the school moves to become ‘outstanding’.

“This progress is a result of the talented and committed teachers who we have at Mill Chase who work in excellent partnership with supportive parents and hard-working students at our school. Once again our ethos of high expectation and aspiration, which is firmly established at Mill Chase, is demonstrated with our continued success.

“All of this, coupled with continued support from a highly effective academy trust, places us in the strongest position to provide the best education for the young people in our town.”