Tameside Primary rated bottom of class in damning Ofsted report
A once thriving primary school has slumped to an inadequate Ofsted rating with parents saying they have ‘lost faith’ in it.
Tameside Primary was rated Good in 2013 but four years on the watchdog has delivered a damning verdict on it.
The large Sandwell Council-maintained school on Price Road in Wednesbury, which has more than 600 students, has now been told not to hire newly qualified teachers because it cannot support them.
Ofsted gave the primary the basement rating in every key area with the ‘Effectiveness of leadership and management’ coming in for the most criticism and teaching branded weak.
Included in that were safeguarding concerns surrounding the risk of harm at break times.
The report said: “Parents are concerned, and rightly, that pupils are not safe because the playground is not supervised adequately.
“Many incidents of pupils bumping into one another and hurting themselves are recorded.”
Bosses were also accused of failing to promote tolerance and good behaviour.
Ofsted said: “There are too many incidents recorded in the school’s behaviour log of confrontational outbursts and a rising number of exclusions.”
Describing behaviour in more detail the report stated: “Some pupils are disrespectful towards staff.”
While it added that students became bored and lacked pride in their work because it was too easy. Teaching standards which were branded ‘weak’ while they also noted that some teachers’ own spelling was incorrect.
The report said: “Pupils are not reaching the standards of which they are capable because of weak teaching and a curriculum that is not structured well enough to meet pupils’ needs.
“Assessments of pupils’ progress are unreliable and there is poor oversight of the quality of teaching and learning.”
The damning verdict continued when assessing the outcomes for students.
Inspectors wrote: “Outcomes for all groups of pupils have been well below those seen nationally over the last three years and beyond.
"This is still the case with pupils currently at the school.
"The progress of all groups of pupils is inadequate as pupils are not learning at a fast enough rate and are not prepared well enough for their next stages of education.”
There were some silver linings for Tameside however with staff credited for good teaching in year six.
At the time of the inspection on July 11 and 12, the acting headteacher had only been in her post six days after stepping up from deputy.
Ofsted stated in the brief time she had already identified important areas for improvement which had ‘been previously left unattended’ but the watchdog stated it was too early to see the impact.
The report added: “The acting headteacher has recognised that many parents have lost faith in the school and in the past parents felt that their concerns about behaviour and weaknesses in teaching have been ignored.
"Although parents told inspectors that there has been recent improvement.”
Mrs Brenda Dearden, chair of Governors said: “Obviously, we are very disappointed and recognise that there are a number of areas that require immediate improvement.
"We won’t shy away from the hard work required to put things right and fully acknowledge the need to raise standards in the school quickly.
“The school has already put a range of measures in place.”
