Janet Duke Primary School in Basildon praised for good progress in latest report (From Echo)

Janet Duke Primary School in Basildon praised for good progress in latest report

8:00am Monday 29th October 2012 in News By Melissa Hills

A STRUGGLING primary school which was told to improve by Ofsted is celebrating after a positive monitoring report.

Janet Duke Primary School in Markhams Chase, Laindon, was given a notice to improve in January this year and after a recent visit from the education watchdog standards are clearly on the up at the school.

Inspectors have said the school is making good progress after major changes in September saw a new deputy headteacher and nine new classroom teachers appointed.

Headteacher Harriet Phelps Knight explained Janet Duke was given a notice to improve by Ofsted after the infant and junior school amalgamated in 2010.

She said: "The infant school was rated good while the juniors was struggling so when we became a primary we had to work harder because there were problems inherited from the old set up.

"We have worked really hard since being given the notice to improve by appointing more teachers and tutors who are working one of one with small groups, we also have a reading recovery tutor who is really helping.

"Basildon is a deprived area and we have to work harder to try and make sure the children do as well as possible, an example of this is four of our children passing the 11 plus this year who will hopefully look at going to grammar schools next year.

"We are aiming for a good Ofsted rating in our next inspection."

The report said Mrs Phelps-Knight had been supported “intensively” by Basildon Council and the support was being reviewed due to how much the school has improved.

The report said: “The school is making good progress in addressing the issues for improvement and raising the pupils’ achievement. “Since the inspection, there has been a significant rise in pupils’ achievement in both Key Stage 1 and 2.

"This has resulted from an increase in the quality of teaching and the addition of a range of booster groups and other interventions.”

The school has also used part of its budget to employ extra tutors to work with small groups and the most dramatic increase has been in mathematics.