St Martins School is told it must improve by Ofsted

St Martins School, in St Martins, near Oswestry, was created in September last year from Rhyn Park School and Performing Arts College, and Ifton Heath Primary School. At their last Ofsted inspections Rhyn Park was judged to be good and Ifton Heath was satisfactory.

However, when the team of Ofsted inspectors visited the new school at the end of March they criticised lesson plans and timetables, which saw students studying some subjects for a whole day, and said the quality of teaching was not good enough, especially in English and maths.

The school went through an unsettled period during the amalgamation, with parents from Ifton Heath strongly opposed to the plan and the headteacher of St Martins school resigning just three months after the amalgamation.

Lead inspector Mary Davies said these issues were reflected in the current performance of the school.

"Although the acting principal has clearly identified priorities for improvement, the new strategies that have been introduced are not yet sufficiently established to have had a sustained impact on improving the quality of teaching and learning," she said.

"Students typically enter the secondary phase of the school with below average basic skills in reading, writing, communication and maths. Rates of progress in English and maths were also below that of other schools during this year."

However, Ms Davies also said it was clear that the school was trying to make progress.

She said: "Governors expressed a determination that the school will be successful and have taken robust action to ensure the recent decline was halted.

"The students show great enthusiasm for learning and are keen to do well. This was particularly noticeable in some revision lessons where Year 11 students showed interest, enthusiasm and commitment despite the task being dull and not well matched to their abilities.

"They told us how much they value the school's efforts to ensure they succeed, and were keen to tell us how much the school has improved since January in terms of their well-being."

Sue Lovecy, who has been acting principal since January and has now been appointed as headteacher, said the report was much as she had expected it to be.

She said: "The report recognises that the changes we've made since January have massively improved the school, and the children have said that to the inspectors. We're trying to build on that now.

"We've got excellent practice at the primary school and what we're looking at now is running that through the whole school. I think that the targets set in the report are fair and I think they're targets that we can attack and move forward to get very quickly."