Thatcham primary school head promises improvements

Parsons Down Junior School was told it required improvement by Ofsted in its recent inspection, after dropping from a good rating in 2010.
However, executive headteacher Petrina Winsor, said that one of the reasons for the drop was the challenges they faced when becoming a federation school with the neighbouring infant school in February this year.
She also said that new systems were in place to make sure that the school was brought back into line.
One of the criticisms in the report was about achievement in English and maths.
The school’s Key Stage 2 level four or above achievement in the subjects dropped from 74 per cent in 2011 to 68 per cent last year, well below the local authority and national average of 79 per cent.
Mrs Winsor said that this meant the school could not be graded as good by Ofsted regardless of its other findings.
However, with pupils having just sat their SAT examinations, she was already hopeful of improvements.
She said: “What we have been doing is really focusing on English work this year to ensure that reading and writing in our children is strong.”
Ofsted inspectors also cited that some parents had raised concerns not everything was done to eliminate bullying.
Mrs Winsor said there had been communication issues with parents as senior staff took lead roles when the school changed to a federation.
She said that they now had an overarching monitoring and handover system in place to be able to better log communications, pass them on to other members of staff and deal with any issues.
She said: “If there had been an issue of bullying at the school we would not have been ‘requires improvement’, we would have been ‘inadequate’.
The report did mention some strengths within the school including that the pupils were engaged and motivated by the curriculum and that school leaders had tackled variation in pupils’ achievement so that standards were rising.
Mrs Winsor said she was confident that the school would be able to improve before the next inspection in two years.
She said: “We are motivated and our momentum is going. We have a clear plan in place and everybody is on board. We are just going to go for it. If we are not out of ‘requires improvements’ in a year, we will be close to it.”
The school has the support of the chairman of governors, Jonathan Taylor, who said: “We fully accept the assessment that further improvements are needed, and the children, parents and staff have been working hard towards these goals. Our governing body is newly formed, and those areas will be our focus over the coming months.”