Llantwit Major School, Llantwit Major

Llantwit Major School is an English-medium school in Wales. Welsh schools are inspected by Estyn rather than Ofsted, and its latest report is published on Estyn's website.

It had 915 pupils in the 2025/26 school census.

19% of pupils are eligible for free school meals (three-year average).

Of its pupils, 11% have additional learning needs; 2% are learning English as an additional language; and 9% are from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.

Year groups range from 64 pupils (Year 13) to 174 (Year 11).

Its delegated budget for 2026-27 works out at £6,508 per pupil, against £4,768 in 2021-22. It carried forward £228k of reserves at the end of 2024-25.

Estyn's report on its February 2026 inspection summarises Llantwit Major School like this:

"Although staff at Llantwit Major School care for their pupils there are important shortcomings in many aspects of the school’s work. Since her appointment, in response to long term instability in senior leadership, the headteacher has implemented a range of strategies aimed at securing improvements. This has included recently appointing a new senior leadership team. However, these actions have had a limited impact on improving aspects such as teaching, curriculum and pupils’ behaviour and attitudes to learning. The quality of teaching is not effective enough and pupils make suitable progress in only around half of lessons. In these lessons, teachers engage pupils appropriately, have sound expectations and plan suitably to build on pupils’ prior learning. However, in around half of lessons, poor teaching means that pupils make only limited progress."

"In these instances, teachers have too low expectations of their pupils, plan tasks for pupils to do rather than thinking about how to improve their learning and often provide too much support, limiting pupils’ independent learning skills. Despite some recent improvements in attendance, rates of attendance remain notably below those of similar schools and the attendance of pupils eligible for free school meals in particular is too low. The school provides a generally caring and supportive environment where many pupils say that they feel safe. However, pupils’ behaviour within and outside of lessons often disrupts learning and too frequently pupils are allowed to remain passive in lessons. This is having a negative impact on pupils’ progress. The school’s curriculum is not supporting the development of pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding well enough Staff do not plan sufficiently for the progressive development of pupils’ literacy and numeracy skills. Pupils in the sixth form have access to a broad range of subjects and are positive about how they are supported to engage with their first choices."

"Pupils in Years 10 and 11 have access to a broad range of GCSE subjects but there are only a limited number of vocational subjects available for pupils to choose. A large number of pupils access long-term external provisions for part of their time at school and the arrangements for this are insufficiently robust. Leaders at all levels do not evaluate their work with sufficient precision. They focus on compliance with school policies rather than the impact that provision has on pupils’ learning and well-being. The headteacher has taken appropriate steps to align senior leaders’ roles and responsibilities to whole school priorities but it is not always clear who leads on specific aspects and leaders at all levels are not held to account robustly enough. The governors, business manager and headteacher monitor the school budget regularly but the planning of school finances is not strategic enough. The school is currently operating in a deficit budget, which is projected to increase notably over the next few years."

Estyn made 6 recommendations: (1) Address the safeguarding issue identified during the inspection; (2) Ensure leaders at all levels understand and carry out their roles effectively and that they are sufficiently held to account; (3) Strengthen self-evaluation and improvement planning processes so that they focus clearly on the impact of provision on pupils’ progress and well-being; (4) Improve curriculum provision and the quality of teaching so that all pupils make strong progress; (5) Strengthen the co-ordination of the provision to support the progressive development of pupils’ literacy and numeracy skills. For literacy in particular: • improve pupils’ speaking and advanced reading skills • ensure a consistently robust approach to improving the technical accuracy of pupils’ writing; (6) Improve attendance, pupils’ behaviour and attitudes to learning.

Estyn follow-up status: Special Measures.

From the headteacher's welcome: "I am extremely proud and privileged to be the Headteacher of such a vibrant and caring school community. The "ARK" encapsulates our three core school values of Ambition, Respect and Kindness. These values were consulted on and agreed by our entire school community."

Clubs and activities named on the school's website include football, netball, rugby, basketball, badminton, multi-sports, drama, choir, chess and Lego.

The nearest railway station is Llantwit Major Rail Station, about 570 metres away (roughly a 7-minute walk).

10 bus stops are within a five-minute walk; the closest is Llantwit Major Community Centre (outside), 140 metres away.