Special measures for church school

A Spalding school has been found inadequate by Ofsted and must ‘urgently improve teaching’ in order to reverse its special measures.

The Spalding Parish Church of England Day School has to improve across a raft of areas in order to improve, according to inspectors.

“Leaders have been slow to respond to pupils’ low attainment and poor progress since the last inspection,” says the report, which was published after an inspection in November.

“The curriculum does not enable pupils to make adequate progress in writing, reading or mathematics,” it adds.

Despite failing in most key areas, the school does have an effective culture of safeguarding and children are well cared for.

There are 486 pupils on the roll and the school has a higher than average number of children with special educational needs.

The role of the local authority support has been criticised as ‘too little, too late.’

“Leaders have not addressed the poor attainment and progress of pupils swiftly enough. Improvements implemented from September 2018 are not sufficiently embedded to have had a positive impact on the quality of teaching,” the inspectors found.

Changes in senior leadership over recent times have ‘resulted in instability and uncertainty,’ and the school’s weaknesses have not been tackled with enough urgency.

“Leaders have an over-generous view of current pupils’ standards,” adds the report.

Governors are praised as ‘loyal supporters’ of the school, but criticised for not acting quickly enough.

“The quality of teaching is weak in too many classes. There is not enough effective teaching to help pupils make secure progress or to reach or exceed the expected standards by the end of Year 6,” the report states.

The behaviour of pupils also has to improve as it’s not always postive, according to the inspection team.

“The proportion of disadvantaged pupils who are persistently absent from school is considerably higher than the national average.”

In all, the school was rated as being inadequate in terms of leadership, quality of teaching, outcomes for pupils and overall. It requires improvement in personal development, behaviour and welfare while early years provision is rated as good.

“The leadership of early years is a strength of the school. All adults work as a cohesive team with consistently high expectations.”