'Staindrop school has experienced a long period of turbulence and instability in staffing, including leadership'

SIGNIFICANT changes have not saved a dale school from being rated as “requires improvement” after a recent Ofsted inspection.

Now teachers at Staindrop School will have to wait until early next year to see if their effort to turn the school around has had an impact.
Ofsted has described the school as “coasting”, meaning that while it meets the government’s minimum standards of pupil progress, pupil achievement was below the national average for progress in English and mathematics during 2014 and 2015.
The school was thrown into turmoil in February when the headteacher, Andrew Flint, left unexpectedly.
The inspection report said: “Since the previous inspection, the school has experienced a long period of turbulence and instability in staffing, including leadership.
“This has had an adverse impact on the school’s journey to becoming a good school. Over this time, leadership has not been strong enough to prevent a significant decline in both the quality of teaching and pupils’ outcomes.”
The inspection was held on June 13 and takes into account last year’s GCSE results.
The school’s management hopes this year’s results will be vastly improved since new mathematics and English teaching staff were appointed in September.
The inspectors described the teaching of English, maths and science as “not consistently good enough”.
Acting headteacher Alyson Carr said new science teachers would join the school in September.
In a letter to parents she said: “You will be as disappointed as I am to find the school judged to be ‘requires improvement’. This was mainly because the progress of pupils in the past 36 months has not been as strong as it should have been.
“The majority of students at the school do make at least the expected progress but we agree with the inspection team’s judgement that this is an area for further improvement.”
The report credits Ms Carr with making changes that seem to be starting to work.
Ofsted lead inspector Mark Evans said: “The acting headteacher leads the school well.
“She has put in place rigorous systems for checking progress and addressing the variability in the quality of teaching. These are having positive impact on the work of the school.”
However, while the report indicates that disadvantaged pupils do not make the progress they should and absenteeism in this group is a problem. The report also said there was some low level disruption and boisterous behaviour by pupils in the school. This, the report said, is not consistently challenged by staff.
Further problems were identified in the presentation of pupils’ work which was described as not consistent enough and there was too much variability in teachers’ expectations of what constitutes neat work.
The checking of pupils’ progress was also found to be inconsistent.  On the positive side, the report found that the school provides well for pupils with special education needs and disabilities.
The report said: “The school knows its pupils well. It provides effective independent advice and guidance for pupils to help them make decisions about next steps.