THE DE Montfort School’s headteacher has defended his progress in improving the school despite a damning report from Ofsted inspectors which states the school requires improvement.
Guy Nichols told the Observer the school now needs to ‘go faster’ in its improvement plan following the publishing of Ofsted’s inspection report on Wednesday.
After a two day inspection in May, Ofsted inspectors found the Four Pools Road school ‘requires improvement’ in all five key assessment areas.
This includes effectiveness of leadership and management, quality of teaching, personal development, outcomes for pupils and 16 to 19 study programmes.
In the report, inspectors said pupils were not making consistently good enough progress in years six, seven and eight. They also attacked the school leadership’s improvement plans for not being ‘detailed enough.’
Disadvantaged students and boys ‘do not achieve their full potential’ in sixth form, the report also found.
However, the school was praised for the good progress made by pupils in year nine, 10 and 11 and the ‘good’ teaching in science, art, computing and physical education. Inspectors also praised the school’s culture of safeguarding pupils.
In response to the report, Mr Nichols said: “I have always said that we are on a journey to becoming the exceptional school that our children and our community deserve and this report has confirmed that we are going in the right direction, but we know we need to go faster.
“Although the report has highlighted many strengths our priority is to improve and we know that we can only do this with the continued and impassioned support of our parents and the local community.”
A number of parents took to Facebook to show their support for the school following the publishing of the Ofsted report.
One parent said: “My daughter is extremely happy at this school and so are many of my friends children.Mr Nichols is a very good and caring headmaster.”
Another said: “Fantastic school. My daughter has came on so much and couldn’t ask for a better head and staff.”
Visit www.reports.ofsted.gov.uk to view the report in full.
