PUPILS at Covingham Park Primary School passed the test when Ofsted inspected them again following concerns about behaviour and learning last year.

In October 2013 inspectors told the school they needed to improve how the pupils conducted themselves and, after revisiting last month, they came away impressed with the leaps and bounds made by both staff and pupils.

Inspector Richard Light said effective action has been taken to make Covingham Park a good school.

“The headteacher and senior leaders have continued with their purposeful actions to raise teachers’ expectations and improve pupils’ attitudes to learning,” he wrote in his report.

“A concerted training programme has been successful in improving teachers’ ability to plan for pupils’ different learning needs and abilities.

“The new approach to project-based homework, a change from a worksheet-dominated system, has grasped pupils’ interest.

“It is producing some high quality inquiry-based work that complements the topics being taught in school.

“School leaders have high expectations of pupils’ behaviour.

“Detailed behaviour records are kept of any serious incidents so that emerging patterns can be quickly identified.

“Senior leaders check that the policy for managing behaviour is working as expected.

“There is scope for the senior managers to improve the way in which they use this information more efficiently.

“Pupils feel very safe in school and are unanimously confident in their view that the school will deal with any incidents that may arise.

“Routine learning in personal, social and health education lessons, as well as assembly experiences, develops pupils’ good understanding of the effect of bullying behaviour.”

Headteacher Caroline Polley said the report was a vindication of the hard work being put in since the middle of last year to improve certain aspects.

“Our key actions were to improve children’s learning behaviour,” she said.

“When Ofsted visited in October 2013 we were already working on our plans to improve outcomes for pupils.

“By June the impact of those actions was clearly evident.

“We have had a key focus on the school drivers of independence, aspiration, inquiry and community.

“We have also enabled teachers to work together to learn from each other and develop their skills.

“We are particularly pleased Covingham Park has been recognised as a happy and harmonious school where school leaders and all staff have high expectations, and pupils feel very safe at school.

“The staff and governors feel very proud of our pupils.”