Primary school now in special measures
15/1/13- Pebsham School, Bexhill.
PEBSHAM School has been placed in special measures following an Ofsted inspection which found inadequate teaching, leadership, management and pupil achievement.
The Ofsted report was published online on Monday, revealing decline in the school’s performance, and that evening new head teacher Lynda Welham met parents to talk about its findings.
Some 70 plus parents attended - one contacted the Observer first to say they were “absolutely furious” with East Sussex County Council for leaving Pebsham school without its own head teacher.
Ofsted judged that staff and governors did not have a clear view of the school’s strengths and what needed to be done to make it better. They had not succeeded in tackling weaknesses and improvements were not made quickly enough. Pupils had underachieved in reading, writing and mathematics, were making insufficient progress, and checks on this were ineffective. Ofsted concluded the school failed to deliver an acceptable standard of education and has asked it to strengthen leadership at all levels, raise the quality of teaching to a consistent level, and ensure children make the expected progress, or better than that.
Mrs Welham, who arrived last week, told the Observer she found parents “surprisingly supportive” of the school given it is in special measures. She said: “There was bewilderment because their children are very happy here, but they wanted to know why has the school gone down the road to decline in this way.”
The plan now is to address the suggested areas for development “urgently and robustly.”
She said: “The staff are determined and committed to moving the school forward. We want to provide the best standard of education we can for the children and we will ensure we get the necessary support to take the school out of special measures as quickly as possible.”
An ESCC spokesman commented: “We are obviously disappointed with the judgements... the issues raised by Ofsted are areas we had already identified for improvement. We can reassure parents that we have an agreed improvement plan in place and we are already seeing progress.”
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Weather for Bexhill-on-Sea
Wednesday 22 May 2013
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 5 C to 15 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Light showers
Temperature: 5 C to 12 C
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