THE headteacher of a Bury primary school which was judged to “require improve-ment” has spoken out following the public-ation of a second inspection report.

Government assess-ors had downgraded Fairfield Community Primary in February from good, stating junior pupils did not make enough pro- gress, teaching was not consistently good and leaders had been slow to take action on teachers’ underperf-ormance.

But a monitoring inspection in April has praised headteacher Chris Ashley, his senior leadership team and governors for ‘acting with urgency and determination to bring about improvement’.

The report, by education inspector Mark Williams, said: “As a result of swift action taken by leaders and governors, there is a strong air of confidence improve-ments will be achieved and sustained.

“The positive responses received from parents indicate a large majority of them share this confid-ence.

“School leaders have a clearer view of which pupils are in need of additional support to keep their learning on course and which need extra challenges.”

Mr Ashley said: “We acknowledge the findings of the Ofsted inspection team and will ‘improve’ in the areas ‘required’.

“But while we are changing our practice in the use of data, we will not submit to a climate which sees pupils as percentages.

“Each one of our 206 pupils is a precious child — not a 0.38%.”

Mr Ashley added: “The inspection findings were based on statistics relating to a specific group of children.

“At our school, the majority of children join us aged three or four perform-ing signific-antly below national expect-ations in key areas of learning and year on year the majority leave us aged 11 performing at or above those expectations.

“In the years between they are happy and safe, are provided with a wealth of cultural opport-unities and are taught by teachers who go to great lengths to remove barriers to learning.

“We believe this makes us a good school, and all over forms of self-review and external review reach the same conclusion.

“I am pleased to say our most valued inspectors, Fairfield parents, agree and despite our surprise and disappointment at the Ofsted grade they have kept faith in our school throughout a very unpleasant and unhelpful process.”

The report advised further action should be taken to ensure teachers are confident in using revised systems to check pupils’ progress to demonstrate how well they are learning.

Ofsted will continue to monitor the school until its next inspection.