Inspection Summary Report - Belfast Royal Academy

Belfast Royal Academy

DE Ref No 142-0028

Inspection Summary Report - October 2025

Belfast Royal Academy’s vision, ‘To ensure that all our pupils are given every opportunity and the support they need to fulfil their potential in school and life’, underpins well the school’s commitment to holistic pupil development in Culture, Currency and Character.
The pupils are highly motivated, independent critical thinkers. Almost all have excellent dispositions to learning and engage with adults and their peers with maturity and self-assurance.
Planning, teaching and assessment for successful learning are mostly effective. The pupils benefit from the subject specialist knowledge of the teachers and their skilful use of engaging resources, purposeful activities and probing questions to extend the pupils’ creativity and critical thinking.
At key stage (KS) 4 and post-16, there is a well-embedded assessment system and a wide range of highly effective approaches to ensure all pupils in these year groups achieve in line with or above their targets. The school has identified appropriately the need to monitor more robustly the progress the pupils make across KS 3.
The school’s value of championing diversity is lived out successfully in the highly inclusive ethos that promotes equity and respect, is responsive to the pupils’ needs and is underpinned by high expectations for all.
The school’s flexible, innovative and pupil‑centred approaches to helping pupils overcome barriers to learning and minimise disadvantage impact positively on the pupils’ learning, well-being and outcomes.
The health and well-being of pupils and staff is a key strategic focus for the school; pupils feel valued and supported and engage confidently in the life of the school. A very caring and nurturing pastoral ethos is underpinned by mutually respectful relationships between staff and pupils.
The preventative curriculum is progressive, engaging and responsive to contemporary issues, preparing the pupils well to stay safe in and outside school, including when online.
The pupils’ many successes in, for example, sport, music and the arts, including high standards in public examinations and wider achievements are celebrated extensively across the school.
The curriculum is rooted in the school values of respect for knowledge and high standards. It is well designed, responsive and dynamic, including the well-planned provision for careers education, information, advice and guidance.
The school has prioritised appropriately a strategic review of digital skills, which includes a recently updated KS 3 ICT curriculum and, in line with our inspection findings, the need to develop further the pupils’ digital skills across the curriculum.
The library is a vibrant, well-resourced hub of pupil-led learning and reading. The staff are passionate and knowledgeable about texts that excite the pupils; they support effectively the whole-school priority of developing a culture of reading, which is having a positive impact on the pupils’ enjoyment of reading and the reading standards they attain.
The broad and engaging programme of extra-curricular activities, trips and competitions is a key strength of the school, teaching pupils valuable social and life skills and improving their academic knowledge.
A significant strength of the school is how the pupils and staff benefit from creative, wide‑reaching collaboration which begins within school and extends across the community.
At the time of the inspection, the evidence provided by the school demonstrates that the arrangements for child and adult protection align with the current statutory guidance.

Next steps

Belfast Royal Academy is realising its vision, ‘To ensure that all our pupils are given every opportunity and the support they need to fulfil their potential in school and life’. The holistic development of the pupils is supported well through extending and enriching the learning experiences provided for them. As set out in the school’s current school development plan, the next step for Belfast Royal Academy to take forward is: to improve further the consistency in the school’s arrangements for planning, teaching and assessment for successful learning, in particular, by monitoring more robustly the progress the pupils make across key stage 3. The District Inspector will monitor the school’s progress in addressing the area for action, as part of ETI’s normal monitoring processes.

The inspection has also identified two areas which warrant wider dissemination and from which other schools can learn. The areas for dissemination are:

the creative and successful approaches which support pupils to overcome barriers to learning and which impact positively on the pupils’ learning, well-being and outcomes; and
the meaningful collaboration with an extensive range of external stakeholders which benefits both pupils and staff.