GOVERNORS at a Stourport primary school have said they are “disappointed” after a recent Ofsted inspection rated it as ‘inadequate’.

Inspectors visited Burlish Park Primary School, in Windermere Way, in July and rated the school as ‘inadequate’ in three areas, ‘requires improvement’ for personal development, behaviour and welfare, and a ‘good’ rating for the school’s early years provision.

This year’s report is a far cry from 2011 when it was rated ‘outstanding’ overall.

The report stated that school leaders in the past have not held teachers sufficiently to account for the progress of their pupils - and consequently, underperformance has not been addressed quickly enough.

It added: “Disadvantaged pupils make significantly less progress than other pupils nationally in reading, writing and mathematics in key stage two.

“Leaders have not stemmed the decline in reading and mathematics standards in key stage two. As a result, pupils make inadequate progress in these subjects in years three to six.

“Teachers, particularly those in years three to five, do not ensure that pupils use basic skills, such as spelling, grammar and punctuation, correctly in their work.

“Governors have not evaluated the quality of education rigorously enough. Discussions about the quality of teaching, learning and assessment are held too infrequently to spot that improvements have been too slow.”

Despite the damning report, the school was praised for its early years provision and pupils’ personal development and welfare.

The report stated: “Children in the early years make good progress and achieve well.

“Leaders have ensured that pupils achieve very well in music, art and physical education.

“Pupils’ personal development and welfare are well promoted. Pupils are confident and happy.”

A spokesman for the school’s board of governors said: “While we are disappointed with the recent Ofsted grading, we accept that there are issues which need to be urgently addressed, and when the results over consecutive years are deemed to be inadequate the quality of teaching and the overall judgement of the school follows suit.

“Please be reassured that we have taken on all of Ofsted’s recommendations and have already implemented rigorous action plans to make the necessary improvements.

“There were many positive aspects of our school detailed in the report, in particular the inspectors were extremely complimentary about the behaviour and mature learning attitudes of our pupils.”

“We have a strong team of dedicated teachers and support staff under our new headteacher, Kerry Postans, and feel confident that we have the capability to make changes to ensure progress is made quickly, and hope to have the continued support of our parents.”