Inspectors have given a damning report to a Potters Bar secondary school, slamming leadership and recommending special measures to improve its officially “inadequate” education.

Ofsted inspectors who visited Mount Grace School in Church Road in January rated leadership and management “inadequate”, with four other key areas as “requires improvement”.

According to the report, published on Tuesday, “Inappropriate language is heard too often around the site. Incidents of poor behaviour are not reducing quickly enough. Pupils’ attendance remains below the national average with little sign of improvement.”

The report fingers “inadequacies in the monitoring of achievement” leading to “continued under-performance”.

It calls on the school to “urgently improve the quality of provision of mathematics and science”.

Inspectors criticised teaching in key stages three and four and the sixth form.

Leadership and management need to “rapidly improve with “robust development plans” and governors need training to “challenge leaders”, the inspectors found.

Their probe found that disadvantaged pupils and those with special educational needs must make more academic progress by the time they leave, and the school has not used extra funding given for them effectively.

Older pupils told inspectors they were frustrated by bad behaviour by others affecting their learning.

However, the inspectors found teaching and learning are improving, particularly in English, while bullying is rare and effectively dealt with.

The school, which as an academy is outside county council control, has declined the opportunity to comment publicly on the report, or explain how it intends to improve.

Its previous inspection in June 2013 rated Mount Grace School as “requires improvement”.