A school has been criticised by inspectors for having “serious weaknesses” in its standard of teaching.

Patcham Junior School in Ladies Mile Road, Brighton, has been judged inadequate following a two-day inspection of its operations on November 21 and 22 last year.

Inspectors from Ofsted censured teachers for not engaging students and said for several years pupils had not made sufficient progress in developing skills in reading, writing and maths.

 


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The report said children’s work wasn’t always regularly marked and that when it was, errors weren’t corrected and pupils weren’t given sufficient guidance on how to improve.

Teachers were also criticised for being “too tolerant of scrappy presentation in pupils’ work” during the 20 lessons observed by inspectors.

Ofsted will now regularly visit the school to ensure improvements are being made.

Ashley Seymour-Williams, headteacher at Patcham Junior, said: “Our pupils continue to achieve above, or well above, the national average.

“However, we fully understand that overall pupils need to make more progress during the time they are with us.

“We are pleased that the inspectors have acknowledged that so many positive changes and improvements have been made over the last year.

“They have recognised that the school has very recently been restructured and is now addressing improvement in a systematic way, teaching is improving and most of the lessons observed by the inspectors were judged as good or better, there is good provision for spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and behaviour is good, and pupils feel very safe and well cared for.

“Our staff, governors and I are absolutely determined to move the school to an Ofsted ‘good’ judgement within the next 12 months, and I am extremely confident that we will achieve this.”

The school has written to parents following the report, offering three separate question and answer sessions with senior staff over the coming days.

School bosses told parents its last inspection in 2008, which was judged ‘good’ by inspectors, had a “very different” framework and that in “many ways” the school had improved.

It read: “For example, if you compare the data from 2008 with 2013, Level 5+ Maths (the level expected by the end of year 8) was 35% in 2008 and 38% in 2013.”