Chester Community School

Chester Community School is a co-educational 11 to 16 comprehensive school that serves an area of severe deprivation. The school is located in a community where the percentage of students across the school eligible for free school meals (FSM) is around 50 per cent, well above the national average. English is an additional language for over three-quarters of the school’s population and many different ethnic communities are represented in the school. Over one quarter of the students are identifi ed as having special educational needs (see Table 8.1). The attainment of students on entry is slightly below the local authority (LA) average, which means that it is well below the national average; however, a recent Ofsted report describes the school as having high achievement given the starting point of its students and the population it serves (see Tables 8.2 and 8.4). The school faces a number of challenging circumstances such as diffi culties in recruitment and retention of teachers and relatively high levels of student mobility.