A primary school where children are being failed by poor teaching has been placed in special measures by Ofsted.
Holy Spirit Catholic school on Poulsom Drive in Bootle received a scathing report following a two-day inspection in May.
Teaching, the report says, is inadequate and limits the progress of pupils. It also says teachers' expectations of what pupils can achieve are low and that staff do not plan work to build on what children already know or can do.
It goes on to say: "Consequently, pupils are making inadequate progress in reading, writing and mathematics.
"Teachers' weak planning means that much of the work they set is the same for all pupils. Teaching is not meeting the standards of many disadvantaged pupils, and the most able pupils are also affected by teachers' lack of challenge.
"Teachers give pupils work that limits their abilities."
The teaching of reading is 'not effective', and staff regularly do not challenge poor behaviour, and continue to teach over distracting low-level noise from other pupils.
At its previous inspection in November 2016, the school was given a 'Requires Improvement' rating.
Ofsted advised leaders to - among other things - Improve the quality of teaching and learning by:
- Providing more specific feedback to staff about how they can improve their
teaching - Evaluating the impact of staff development through regular checks on pupils’ progress
- Setting higher expectations of pupils’ achievement in mathematics and providing more challenging texts for pupils to read
- Ensuring that pupils’ work is challenging, particularly for the most able and disadvantaged pupils
- Being more analytical in monitoring the quality of pupils’ work, ensuring that the work set is appropriate to the year-group expectations and the needs of pupils.
But standards have slipped further, with the school now dubbed 'Inadequate' - the lowest rating possible.
Inspectors did uncover some positives, however.
Safeguarding arrangements are said to be effective; pupils feel safe at school, while parents did not express any safety concerns.
As well as this, leaders and staff 'promote the Catholic ethos of the school effectively'.
Val Leatherbarrow, Chair of Governors at Holy Spirit Catholic Primary School, said: "While we are all very disappointed with the latest Ofsted report, we cannot hide from the findings and already we are working on plans to correct this.
"The report highlighted that our pupils are friendly, polite, safe, well looked after and enjoy school with teachers providing effective support for their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. This is obviously pleasing.
"However, there are too many weaknesses identified and we would like to reassure parents and carers that speedy action will be taken to implement all the recommendations in the report.
"While this takes place, we will regularly contact parents, carers and staff to update on how we plan to do this.
"Now that this has been identified and with the support of everyone at the school – our pupils, teachers, support staff, parents, carers and governors – we are determined to make Holy Spirit emerge stronger and better than before."
