Primary school told to improve quality after damning report

Inspectors visited St Mary’s Church of England Primary School twice during January.

During their visit to the Shirley Avenue school they deemed all areas to require improvement, including leadership and management, teaching, behaviour of pupils and their overall outcomes.

The education watchdog said that teaching at the school varies in quality and that the school is not improving at a fast enough pace.

The report reads: “School leaders and governors have been generous in their self-evaluation of the school.

“This has led to slow improvement over time.

“The headteacher and deputy headteacher lead all aspects of the school, the deputy having a large teaching commitment.

“This means that the role of middle leadership has not been developed to enable them to lead key aspects of the school, such as early years.

“Teaching varies in quality across the school. This inconsistency in the quality of teaching is a key reason why outcomes at the end of year six are not where they should be.

“Teaching assistants vary in how much support they give to pupils.

“Some support is effective, but at other times teaching assistants over-support pupils which prevents pupils from being independent.”

The report did however point out that: “Children generally behave well.

“Where the pace of lessons is swift and where pupils are challenged, they enjoy their work and consequently their behaviour is exemplary.”

St Mary’s were unable to provide a comment at the time of going to print.