A HEADTEACHER has defended her staff after her school was judged to require improvement by Ofsted.

St Ebbe’s Primary in Whitehouse Road, Oxford, was deemed good when inspected in 2008.

But the 310-pupil school was given the new judgement ‘requires improvement’ following an inspection in March, the results of which have just been made public.

Criticisms included variability of teaching, too much variation in pupils’ achievement, low reading skills at Key Stage 1 and a wider than average gap in progress between pupils eligible for the pupil premium and their classmates.

Pupil premium is additional funding allocated by the Government for children who have registered for free school meals in the last six years. It also applies to those who have been looked after for more than six months and children of service personnel.

Headteacher Susie Bagnall said an external consultant had visited in the month prior to the inspection and judged teaching to be good to outstanding.

She said: “I believe we deserved a good judgement.

“We had a very difficult Ofsted inspection and staff felt fairly intimidated by the team of inspectors, but we want to transform our negative experience into something really positive.

“We have a strong team of very creative teachers who did not deserve this judgement. “However, we are now receiving strong support from the local authority and the diocese to ensure teachers can consistently deliver good to outstanding lessons under pressure and scrutiny from Ofsted.”

Oxfordshire County Council has not challenged Ofsted’s overall judgement but has raised question marks about the details of the report.

Council spokesman Owen Morton said the authority had questioned references made by Ofsted to data relating to pupil progress. The school held open meetings for both prospective and current parents to discuss the issues.

Diocese of Oxford deputy education director Fiona Craig said: “Staff at St Ebbe’s Primary School dealt with the inspection process in a professional manner and they are now working hard to address the issues raised by Ofsted.

“We are working alongside the local authority to assist the school.”

Oxfordshire County Council's cabinet member for education, Melinda Tilley, added: “I am quite sure when the full facts are known they will be able to make the improvements needed.”

Ofsted spokesman Sophia Said said of inspectors: “They understand teaching is hard work, and as inspection can be stressful they do all they can to put staff at ease.

“The headteacher and senior staff of any school also have a role to play in ensuring the experience for teaching staff during inspection is properly managed.”

WHAT IS BEING DONE

The school has put a number of interventions into place to target reading, including joining the Oxfordshire Reading Campaign.

Seven-year-olds at the school participating in the 10-week programme saw an 11-month increase in their sentence reading age and a nine month increase in their phonics reading age, while Year 3 pupils taking part had an average sentence reading improvement of 14 months and eight-and-a-half months in phonics.

Mrs Bagnall said of the group of 10 Year 6 children receiving pupil premium last year, six also had special needs and seven spoke English as an additional language.

She said: “This year’s cohort of seven pupils receiving the premium are well placed to make good progress by the end of the summer.”

Mrs Bagnall anticipated 78 per cent of Year 2 children would achieve higher Level 2bs in reading at the end of the summer compared to 67 per cent in 2012, while children were on track to meet national targets for maths.