Trustee and Staff Response to the May 2007 Ofsted Inspection Report...

Ofsted has inspected the Priors School twice before, registering a ‘good’ in 2002 for the main school and ‘excellent’ for the playgroup/nursery/reception year in 2006.

It was therefore somewhat surprising to receive the inspectors’ latest overall conclusion of ‘satisfactory’ for education and in particular ‘inadequate’ for pupils’ welfare. However, many things have changed since our last inspection, including different regulations and a new regime/tick-box scoring system applied by inspectors, and in particular to independent schools such as ours.

We recognise that there will always be room for improvement and we are therefore reacting positively to the inspectors’ comments to ensure the school continuously improves. 

Having analysed the Inspectors’ comments both regarding both the educational issues and the 17 specific areas identified by the inspector for welfare improvement, many are administrative technicalities and easily resolvable – some have been already addressed. Please also note that we were deemed ‘inadequate’ in 17 items out of a total of 96 welfare issues inspected i.e. we complied in 79! 

Naturally, we will concentrate on the improvements, but this needs to be balanced by some of the favourable comments noted by the inspector, vis: 

	Quality of education meets all of the regulations relating to the curriculum, teaching and assessment
	Pupils are achieving well in tests overall
	Pupils are adequately prepared for the next stage in their education and later life
	Pupils are confident and articulate and able to express their opinions carefully
	Pupils relate well to each other and to staff
	Teaching encourages pupils to behave responsibly and their personal development is good
	The school provides good opportunity for exercise, with the daily use of the outdoor area
	The school promotes good behaviour amongst its pupils
	All parents receive satisfactory reports showing the progress their children are making
	The provision for pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is adequately promoted

To these comments we can now add our very recent SATS exam results, which again shows that our children are performing well above the national average: 

Key stage 1 (Level 3 & above passes):

Subject                             National Average                  The Priors School

Speaking and Listening                 22%                                      43%   Reading                                     26%                                      71%   Writing                                      14%                                      14%  Mathematics                               21%                                      71% Science                                     24%                                      86% 

Regarding the educational comments made by the Inspector, the Staff have already completed a post inspection evaluation and we would like to inform you of the following development plans: 

	A consistent marking policy to include objectives and next steps
	Tracking forms for each student to record progress across each year group
	Additional equipment/programmes to supplement worksheets (but financial implications)
	Alternatives teaching strategies for more gifted children starting in Sept.
	Implement new numeracy and literacy frameworks
	Progress of children with special needs to further stages has particular financial implications
	Children’s workbooks were used to predict standards and make comments; to improve presentation, more parent support is needed or much more work will need to be redone
	Writing is a national problem and is therefore specifically being targeted
	Staff already have daily, medium term and long term subject planning and the inspector acknowledged that these need not be rewritten daily because the staff know the children very well
	Underperformance by boys is a national problem but our gap is far less than the average; our pace and style of teaching is being reviewed

We would also like to make the following comments regarding the 17 specific improvement areas made by the inspector regarding welfare:

	7 of the 17 ‘inadequacies’ relate to formalizing the existing parent complaints procedure; we will include these but have never had to use them during the last 10 years!
	Child protection training is a relatively new requirement which is already being addressed
	Risk assessments for educational visits are being updated; some schools don’t risk going anywhere! but we aim to continue outside visits subject to sensible and practical precautions
	Health and Safety risk assessments: we periodically ask an industry professional to inspect and report on any issues within the school; the annual electrical test has also been recently completed. Staff with a nominated Trustee will now carry out further ongoing risk assessments to continue to identify and remedy potential hazards
	Our existing first aid policy has been amended
	CRB checks were previously required for people dealing with children alone; this now covers anyone working regularly at the school and we have therefore already instigated checks accordingly; it should however be noted that the processing can sometimes take weeks, if not months!
	Overseas teachers qualifications were checked and cleared by the Education Department, but not recorded, hence the ‘inadequate’ mark
	Caring for children who may be ill: we do not have a separate medical room and consider our existing procedure of comforting/supervising a child in the staff room and contacting parents is satisfactory
	Contact number of Chair of Trustees will be circulated
	Particulars of educational provision for parents of pupils who speak English as a 2nd language (non currently) being revised

Children have generally attained both above average and improving SATS exam results (externally marked), they have progressed to schools of their parents’ choice and done well thereafter; we therefore believe that the schools’ aims are being delivered by our excellent team of Staff and helpers. 

The Priors School is a unique community supported independent primary school within the UK; we have achieved hugely over the last 10 years and are confident we can and will rapidly address the issues raised by the inspector to improve still further. 

We must not forget that, unlike all state schools, we receive no central or local government funding towards our annual operating costs of £160,000 which sometimes puts constraints on certain facets of administrative tasks while we concentrate on the education of your children. 

State primary schools have received unprecedented additional funding over the last few years and we have been marked down on some issues simply because we do not currently have similar amounts of money to spend; HOWEVER, our children are achieving excellent SATS exam results and as noted by the inspector are confident, articulate, relate well to staff and each other and are adequately prepared for the next stage of their education and later life. 

Fundraising and continued volunteer help from parents in particular remains crucial to the continued success and development of our village community school; I would therefore request that all parents offer some form of help within the school – there are many and varied tasks which have to be done by someone! please get involved and make your contribution to your school. 

Should there be any other questions or issues that you wish to raise with the Trustees, please contact any of us in confidence either verbally or in writing. 

John Newton

Chairman of Trustees