THE quality of teaching at one of the best schools in South Gloucestershire has fallen and now requires improvement, government inspectors have found.

Marlwood Secondary School, previously rated by Ofsted as “good”, has seen its rating fall in its latest report.

The school has been rated grade 3 overall – one level down from its previous achievement and one level above the lowest rating.

The school on Vattingstone Lane, Alveston, which caters for 960 students between the ages of 11 and 18, was visited by inspectors on December 5 and 6.

The school received a “requires improvement” for the four key areas of the Ofsted inspection – achievement of pupils, quality of teaching, behaviour and safety of the pupils and the leadership of the school.

In his report lead inspector Chris King said that while the quality teaching at the school was improving, not enough students were making sufficient progress. He said: “The attainment and progress of different groups of students and achievement across different subjects are inconsistent.

“Achievement and progress are not consistently good because not enough teaching is good or better. Too many teachers plan the same work for all students in their class, leading to some finding it too easy and some too hard.

“Marking does not always inform students about how well they are doing or provide them with sufficient guidance on how to improve their work.”

The report said that while leaders had introduced recent initiatives to improve the school’s performance, they had yet to improve the quality of teaching so that all students experience consistently good or better teaching.

Mr King also noted the sixth form required improvement because too many students did not achieve well enough at AS level.

He also said that teaching was improving and the school was making good use of its outstanding teaching to support the development of pupils.

Kathryn Khan, chairman of the school’s governors, said: “Our summer Ofsted report results were both up and down. Therefore, September saw us making significant changes to address the consistency of teaching throughout the school.”