School commended for better teaching (From The Oxford Times)

School commended for better teaching

12:00pm Monday 21st January 2013 in News

INSPECTORS have been back to the first Oxfordshire school to receive the new “requires improvement” Ofsted rating.

St Mary’s Primary School, in Southam Road, Banbury, wastold it needed to improve after an inspection in October last year, which triggered regular monitoring visits.

The controversial new rating replaced satisfactory but is less serious than schools judged inadequate, which are either told they have serious weaknesses to address urgently, or are placed in special measures.

St Mary’s was told that pupils did not make consistently good progress and teaching was not good enough.

Writing, maths and marking were also highlighted as areas for improvement.

But headteacher Kathryn Crawford and other senior leaders were told they had brought stability and drive to the school after a period of uncertainty due to changes in leadership.

After the first monitoring inspection, carried out last month, the results of which have just been published, inspector Ian Hodgkinson said: “School records indicate that the quality of teaching continues to improve following a determined effort to eradicate inadequate practice.”