Lathom High School head teacher vows to address areas of improvement highlighted in Ofsted report

Nov 22 2012 by Rob Pattinson, Skelmersdale Advertiser

THE head teacher of Lathom High has vowed to “quickly address” areas highlighted in an Ofsted report which graded the school as requiring improvement.

Inspectors found that students do not make fast enough progress in all their subjects, resulting in attainment below the national average; that despite improvements teaching is not yet good enough to secure good progress for all students; and that senior leaders and governors are “too slow” to pick up signs of underachievement and halt it quickly enough.

But the school was praised for being a happy place where students feel cared for, with teaching being seen to have improved since the previous inspection. The report also recognised the head teacher had shown good capacity to drive further improvement.

Head teacher Tim Farr said: “As a school we knew exactly where we were and we knew this would be the outcome of the report. All of the action points were already in our school development plan, and that was noted by the inspectors.

“We are a lovely caring school, we know we have to improve in terms of teaching and learning. What we explained to Ofsted is the data we hold points to us being on an improving trend. I have always maintained it takes time for the improvements we have made to filter through to results at the end. “We are measured on how close we are to the national average and we expect to achieve 60% A*-C GCSE grades (including English and Maths) in 2013.”

Ofsted scrapped the 'satisfactory' grade in September, replacing it with 'requires improvement', with ‘good’ now the minimum standard schools are expected to achieve.