Welwyn Garden City school improves Ofsted rating

A Welwyn Garden City school is celebrating going from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘good’ in a recent Ofsted report.

Commonswood Primary School in Welwyn Garden City was rated ‘good’ for quality of teaching, learning and assessment, personal development, behaviour and welfare, outcomes for pupils and early years provision.

It received an ‘outstanding’ rating for effectiveness of leadership and management.

Headteacher Gill Seymour said: “We are immensely proud that the Ofsted report gives the school the recognition it deserves for the fantastic provision it offers and the success it achieves through the dedication of its learners, its staff and its governors.”

The report praised the school for improving significantly since the previous inspection. It said: “The school continues to develop well because the headteacher is relentless in addressing areas for improvement and knows precisely what needs to be done to secure further improvement.

“Since the previous inspection, pupils’ achievement has improved, particularly in writing, because of more effective teaching, learning and assessment.

“The stimulating curriculum interests and enthuses pupils. As a result, pupils produce much high quality work.”

However, the report also explained why the school did not achieve an ‘outstanding’ rating, stating: “Instructions to pupils who have special educational needs or disability are sometimes not clear enough and they struggle to understand the task”.

It also said that the most able pupils should be given activities that were suitably challenging.