OFSTED praises Manor Court's "driving force" (From This is The West Country)

OFSTED praises Manor Court's "driving force"

12:00pm Wednesday 17th October 2012 in News

OFSTED has said Manor Court Primary School head teacher Sarah Wellman is the “driving force” behind improvements at the Chard school.

The school was left disappointed at the beginning of the year when OFSTED handed it a “notice to improve” after an inspection, and found pupils’ overall effectiveness and achievement to be inadequate.

But nine months on the inspectors returned for a monitoring visit and found improvements had been made.

Inspector Robert Pyner said: “The school’s making good progress addressing issues for improvement and raising pupils’ achievement.

“There’s clear commitment across the school to raising the achievement of pupils, and this is seen in the work of senior leaders, staff and governors.

“The driving force behind this improvement is the head teacher, who has displayed determination and resilience to build on developments which were at an early stage at the time of the last inspection.”

Head teacher Mrs Wellman said: “To be at this level is quite an achievement, and that’s down to the hard work of the children and our skilled staff along with the support of the parents and the school governors.

“It’s all about a joint team effort.”

Mrs Wellman said a key reason behind the improvements was a link-up with the respected Huish Primary School in Yeovil.

“The partnership we’ve formed has been fantastic,” said Mrs Wellman.

“It has been the best level of training support I’ve had and I can’t thank Pauline Price (Huish head) enough.”

Mrs Wellman said she was not resting on her laurels, adding: “There’s a lot of hard work still to do and we’re aiming for a ‘good’ rating at the next inspection.”