A primary school in the village just outside Taunton has been told it ‘needs improvement’ in all areas, according to Ofsted education inspectors. Stoke St Gregory Church of England Primary School received the grade last month, following a comprehensive report in 2018 in which it received the same grade.
The 2022 report states that staff have only “relatively recently agreed to a well-planned program of relationship, sexuality and health education”, but the overall capacity of staff to teach this particular aspect does not was not properly delivered, with many feeling “lack of confidence” in her teaching. . In the full 2018 report, the school had achieved a “good” rating in personal development, which has since expired and is now an area identified by inspectors as being below expected standards.
Chief Inspector Wendy Marriott says the quality of student learning is “too variable” and criticizes subject and lesson planning in the report saying that “school leaders’ curriculum thinking is not sharp enough”. This means that due to both “insufficient depth” in planning and variable quality of learning, there are later gaps in students’ knowledge.
READ MORE: Ofsted judges Taunton school ‘inadequate’ but says Covid-19 ‘has slowed pace of improvements’
These knowledge gaps are compounded due to identified problems with leaders’ curriculum thinking, which “does not identify precisely what students should learn or retain – teaching is not based on accurate checks of what that the students know.
“The curriculum lacks specific guidance on what should be taught,” the report states, “which leads to a lack of challenge for students. Assessment is not always accurate enough in the early grades – hence , education is not planned well enough to help children who need to catch up in their development.”
“Teaching is not based on precise checks of what students know. Students can recall certain facts about history and science, for example, but not always the correct ones”
The village of Stoke St Gregory (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
However, according to the report, needed improvements to the program have been delayed due to a lack of middle leadership and, of course, the pandemic. It says the matter is being tackled by senior leaders who have ‘tried to get a well-planned program’ but the job ‘is not done’ and there have been ‘unavoidable delays’ in the process thanks to Covid .
Positives express how safe students feel at school and are doing well overall, with effective safeguards firmly in place. However, despite this, Ofsted raises concerns about pupils misbehaving, ‘bad behavior not being dealt with quickly enough’, a direct contrast to the previous report where pupils thought ‘adults solve any behavior nasty, like name-calling, quickly and fairly.”
The report goes on to say that the school is, for the most part, beginning to implement the necessary changes and praises the institution’s “family feeling”, stating that “most students are well behaved and hard working”. Despite the obvious problems that persist, there have been management changes which, alongside Covid delays, have hampered the overall progress made by Stoke St Gregory Primary School since its last inspection.
Stoke St Gregory Primary School has been approached by Somerset Live for comment. The full 2022 Ofsted report can be read here.
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Source: www.somersetlive.co.uk
This notice was published: 2022-04-06 23:00:00
