Ofsted hail Lyminster school for ‘inspiring’ teaching

Lyminster Primary School has been judged as ‘good’ in a report by one of the inspectors from the monitory body, much to the delight of head teacher, Jane Taylor.

The evaluation is the school’s first since it took the radical step to change from an infant school to a primary school, in 2011. And it appears that it is heading in the right direction to becoming an ‘outstanding’ school.

In his report, lead inspector Clive Dunn highlighted the primary’s ‘imaginative’ and ‘engaging’ methods used to educate pupils.

Mr Dunn wrote: “Where teaching is most effective, there is a sharp focus on what pupils of different abilities are learning. For example, in year-one, in an imaginative, engaging and varied way, teaching and tasks linked strongly when pupils put verbs into the past tense, with the more able pupils applying these skills to write a recount.”

During his inspection last month, Mr Dunn also noted that teaching was effective and the standard of progress by pupils in early years and key stage 1 was generally good and above the national average in the key areas of reading, writing and mathematics.

However, despite all the praise, the inspector did highlight a few areas Lyminster could improve upon, in order to reach the top level of teaching standards.

He noted that although teaching was good, there was still room for improvement, particularly in the marking of children’s work, which at times was variable in its quality.

Mr Dunn’s report also said that, although staff had generally high expectations for pupils, targets for the rate of pupils’ progress at key stage 2 were not sufficiently challenging to be likely to lead to outstanding achievement.

In response to the results, Mrs Taylor said: “It’s great to see the Littlehampton area now has three ‘good’ schools in it.

“As a growing school we’re increasingly getting new staff and improving our standards of teaching.

“Our staff and neighbour schools work well as a team, so we look forward to our next inspection.”