North Yorkshire County Council is providing an intensive package of support to Starbeck Community Primary School, Harrogate, as the school has been placed in special measures by Ofsted.
Although early years provision is judged as good in the school, Starbeck has been undergoing a period of turbulence in staffing which the County Council has been supporting leaders to address.
The Council has appointed Garry de Castro Morland, Headteacher of Greatwood Community Primary, an outstanding school in Skipton, as full time consultant head to support staff at Starbeck, strengthen leadership, address parental concerns and move improvement plans further forward.
As a result of previously brokered intensive support from the Ebor Academy Trust in the autumn and spring terms, Ofsted acknowledges that teaching has improved in some key stage 2 classes and that children in early years receive a good foundation which establishes “effective attitudes and skills for future learning”. Pupils’ behaviour for learning across the school has also improved.
The inspection report states that the school provides effective opportunities “for fostering pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and modern British values”. Pupils explore the importance of democracy, tolerance and respect in a variety of ways, according to Ofsted: “They enjoy the arts, a modern foreign language and history and can talk eloquently about their interests in these subjects.”
However, inspectors judged that recent improvements were not embedded sufficiently to prevent the school being rated inadequate overall during April’s inspection.
County Councillor Patrick Mulligan, North Yorkshire’s Executive Member for Schools, said: We are fully aware of all the issues at Starbeck Community Primary raised by Ofsted and we are already moving forward with an improvement plan. We have appointed a consultant head with a strong record in raising standards of teaching and learning and staff members are embedding the improvements from the Ebor Teaching School Alliance.
We are also strengthening governance through the appointment of additional governors following a review of the Governing Body’s performance so it becomes more clearly focused on holding the school to account.
We are confident that with all these measures in place Starbeck will get back on track to providing the good or better standards of teaching and learning to which all children in this community and across North Yorkshire are entitled.
