STRONG leadership, excellent governance and good teaching are helping to improve standards at St Peter's First School in Williton, according to the latest Ofsted report.

Inspector Jane Neech rated the school as 'good' with a 'good' capacity for sustained improvement.

She said the school had focused on developing pupils' positive attitudes to learning since it joined Old Cleeve First School and Danesfield Middle School in the Quantock Federation, sharing a headteacher and governing body.

Pupils behaviour was now rated as 'outstanding', they in turn were given outstanding care, guidance and support and benefited from the "exemplary leadership" of chairman of governors Peter Rowe.

Ms Neech said: "Since St Peter's has become part of the federation it has gained from an improved reputation in the community.

"The school intake has increased and new families report that the induction is 'fantastic' for the children in reception.

"Current school data and pupils' work show that the progress of all groups of pupils is improving and is now good."

She said the school had the capacity to make further improvements because of the "ambition, drive and commitment" of leaders, governors and staff, excellence governance, the strong leadership of executive headteacher Ian Bradbury and the close monitoring of teaching and learning.

She said: "The improvements in teaching since the last inspection are a result of the school's sharp focus on improving the relevance and interest of the curriculum.

"This has helped to develop pupils' positive attitudes to learning.

"Consequently, the gap in performance between groups of pupils is narrowing.

"However, teaching in English and mathematics is not always sufficiently challenging because expectations are not always high enough.

"Assessment during lessons is limited, so opportunities to change the direction of the lesson to increase challenge can be missed."

She recommended more was done to ensure teaching in English and mathematics was consistently challenging and marking was rigourous to help pupils improve their written work across all subjects.

But she found that while younger children started school with below average levels of literacy and mathematics, by the end of key stage one, their performance was broadly average, while those with special needs outperformed their national counterparts.

In reading, the gap between the achievement of boys and girls was narrowing as a result of a focus on phonics and new reading materials selected specifically to interest boys.

She said progress of pupils in year four was also improving steadily while, overall, lessons engaged pupils' interest and teachers made the most of resources and technology to make a "marked contribution to the quality of learning".

"Teachers' subject knowledge is very good. Teaching is particularly good in Spanish.

"Teachers set tasks for different abilities, but some lessons lack challenging opportunities for pupils in order to raise standards further.

"Teachers' marking and the use of assessment generally make a contribution to pupils' learning.

"However, pupils' ability to improve their work is sometimes restricted because, at times, marking fails to guide pupils how to correct basic mistakes in written work, not only in English, but across a range of subjects, or to improve the content," Ms Neech said.

She praised the school's "excellent targeted support for individuals" and said a good curriculum was extended further by opportunities offered through the federation, particularly in sport, music, drama and modern foreign languages.

"A further example of the excellent care afforded to pupils is the swift action taken by the school in response to the recent severe flooding of three classrooms.

"Through providing for the older pupils at the partner middle school there has been little disruption and no groups have been disadvantaged in their education.

"These actions have been wholeheartedly praised by parents, pupils and their families," she said.

She found the "overwhelming majority" of parents and carers were happy with all aspects of their children's education, while in the early years foundation stage, youngsters were confident, benefited from good teaching and enjoyed well-organised resources and routines.

Ms Neech concluded: "Leaders and managers are highly ambitious to ensure all groups have an equal chance to achieve as well as they can.

"The newly created federation leadership team is well led by the executive headteacher and changes, though comparatively recent, have had an impact on improving teaching and pupils' progress.

"Morale is high and key areas for improvement are being tackled systematically."

Mr Bradbury said he was delighted the hard work and commitment of all staff had been recognised.

Photo: Steve Guscott