Shropshire primary school 'must improve' after Ofsted inspection

Kinlet Primary School, between Cleobury Mortimer and Bridgnorth, was told to improve by education watchdog Ofsted in four of the five key areas under inspection.

The school was rated good for early years provision but in need of improvement in all other areas, including leadership and management, teaching and learning, behaviour and wellbeing of pupils and outcomes for pupils.

Ofsted's rating system ranges from "outstanding" for the best schools to "inadequate" for those that are failing. "Requires improvement" means staff will have been told work is needed to raise standards, but does not mean regulators are deemed to have to intervene directly.

In his report, lead inspector Mark Sims said there was a high number of behaviour-related incidents.

He said: "The school's behaviour logs show that last year, and this term, there have been a high number of recorded behaviour incidents for such a small school.

There are too many occurrences of repeated misbehaviour by individual pupils."Leaders' analysis of behaviour incidents is not rigorous or timely enough to identify trends or to demonstrate the impact of strategies to promote improved behaviour."

At its previous inspection in 2012 the school was rated as good overall.

The 64-pupil, age four to 11 school was inspected on December 3.

Mr Sims also said the monitoring of pupils' progress was in need of improvement.

"Too few pupils, in a number of different year groups, made more than expected progress from their starting points in reading, writing and mathematics during the last academic year," he added.

"Leaders do not know how well pupils have progressed since the start of the autumn term. Current progress of classes and pupil groups is not monitored in a timely enough manner.

"Marking and written feedback to pupils is inconsistent.

"Too often pupils are not given extended tasks, and when they are they do not always respond to them. Where pupils do respond to extensions, teachers do not always mark their answers."

He said in addition, the most able older pupils were not making the best progress they could because they were not being challenged enough long-term, looking at evidence from pupils' books over time.

However, he said there were some strengths at the school, including good early-years progress and detailed tracking of the small number of disabled pupils and those with special educational needs.

"Provision for pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is good," Mr Sims said.

"The caring ethos of the school ensures pupils are looked after well."

He said the curriculum provided pupils with a wide range of subjects and experiences, especially in music, languages and sport.

Headteacher Anita Raymond declined to comment on the results of the report.