PUPILS of an Oldbury primary school have “a bounce in their step” but are taken out of school for holidays too often, Ofsted inspectors have said.

Oldbury on Severn Church of England Primary School was graded as “good” by Ofsted on June 6 during a short inspection, matching the same grade in its last full inspection in May 2012.

Staff were praised in the report for knowing the pupils and their families very well, resulting in them being quick to pick up any issues of concern to pupils and supporting them appropriately.

This assessment then went on to say that “pupils know whom they can talk to if they are worried and are confident that actions would be taken to resolve any matters”.

Her Majesty’s inspector Iain Freeland said in the report that during the inspection, pupils arrived at school “with a bounce in their step”, and were very keen to talk about the parts of the school they particularly enjoy.

Standards have noticeably improved thanks to a new curriculum which, with the support of teachers, has raised expectations of both staff and pupils.

With more pupils joining the school during key stage two, the school was noted to be swift in assess what new pupils know, understand and can do, from which learning programmes have been developed to meet their needs and ensure good progress.

One of the main focus points in the report, attendance, was identified to have improved since the last inspection, with senior leadership having challenged parents to help reduce the problem, with statistics broadly in line with national levels.

But parents were still criticised by Mr Freeland for taking their children on holiday during school during term time, with governors having not given sufficient attention to overcoming this.

Work was also found to be required in improving the children’s writing, despite a concentrated effort to improve the teaching across all year groups, with a lack of consistency in the level of writing across different subjects.

And despite it being found that an increasing number of pupils, from across all year groups, are working to a higher standard, more could be done to develop spelling and punctuation in lessons other than English.