A PRIMARY school which surrendered control to the Church of England has been told it must improve.

Inspectors from the education watchdog Ofsted said children at Grove CofE school were not making enough progress in writing or mathematics.

They also said quality of teaching was not consistently good and teachers were often bad at assessing pupils' progress.

Overall they gave the North Drive school the second-lowest rating – 'requires improvement'.

The inspectors also raised concerns that 'pupil premium' funding for disadvantaged children was not being 'sufficiently focused' to make sure all eligible pupils were making good progress and attending school well, and said an external review should be carried out to solve the problem.

The grading follows what Ofsted described six months of 'staffing turbulence' after the departure of the previous headteacher Wendy Foster.

After she left, from October 2015 to April 2016 the school was led by several 'interim leaders'.

However the inspectors also said the school had been 'steadily improving' since the arrival of new headteacher Sue Gould in April.

Following their visit on on January 10 and 11, the inspectors said Mrs Gould had 'addressed key areas' including improving pupils’ behaviour in lessons.

As a result, they said in their report this month, pupils now had more 'positive attitudes' towards learning.

They also said 'safeguarding' was effective and noted that pupils feel safe and well looked after.

Parents were 'very positive' about the school to the inspectors and that 'almost all would recommend the school to another parent'.

The last time the school was inspected in February 2013, Ofsted bumped the school's rating up from 'requires improvement' to 'good', the second-highest grade.

The then-headteacher Mrs Foster said she had 'taken everything to bits' and built it up again since she joined five years previously, following a period where the school had four heads in two years.

The school then became an academy on December 1, 2013, joining the Oxford Diocesan Schools Trust (ODST) run by the Church of England.

The trust said this week it was 'pleased that the school had an effective headteacher working hard in the school' and that the report 'acknowledged the progress made under the her leadership'.

It also said it was 'confident' that the problems identified in the report could be 'rapidly and successfully addressed'.

In order to improve, the inspectors told teachers they needed to have high expectations of pupils and 'challenge them appropriately'.

At the time of the inspection in January, the school had 176 pupils aged four to 11, which Ofsted described as 'smaller than average'.

This paper attempted to contact Mrs Gould for an interview but she did not respond.