CHIPPING Sodbury’s only secondary school has, for the second consecutive time, been told it requires improvement by Ofsted.

Chipping Sodbury School received the third worst rating from the education watchdog following a two-day inspection in December last year. It follows a previous inspection which overall said the school required improvement in 2013.

Teaching, rated as good in the previous report, has declined and is now said to need improving particularly by challenging pupils more and having higher expectations of what they can achieve. Lead inspector Stephen Smith said: “This is a school that requires improvement.

“Achievement of pupils, including those in the sixth form, requires improvement. Boys are not making enough progress over time and there are little signs of improvement.

“The quality of teaching, learning and assessment across the school has declined and improvement has been too slow since the last inspection.

“Leaders have not had sufficient impact on the improvement of achievement or the quality of teaching, learning and assessments. Governors’ understanding of achievement is not sharp enough.”

Management thought too highly of the quality of teaching with too little attention being paid to the impact of teaching, said Mr Smith.

In the sixth form, overall progress of students taking A-levels was well below the national average and a high number of pupils who dropped out of A-level maths was blamed on weak assessment which did not identify underachieving pupils.

The report praised pupils’ behaviour, bullying was said to be rare and the school ‘rightly prides itself on being a caring institution that supports all pupils’.

To improve, the school needs to raise achievement by challenging pupils more and adopt higher expectations of what they can achieve. Evaluation should be rigorous and accurate, leaders must measure the quality of teaching and promote improvement and governors should hold the school’s management team to account.

Head teacher Gareth Millington said the dip in results at the 688-pupil school, which saw the percentage of students achieve five or more A8 to C grades at GCSE drop from 60 per cent in 2014 to 51 per cent last year, did show not all students are performing as well as staff wanted them to.

He added: “We were disappointed to receive the same overall rating as our last inspection but we and Ofsted recognise that there is still work to be done to make this an outstanding school.

“The latest Ofsted report emphasises that students behave well, enjoy coming to school and have excellent relationships with staff.

“Students are happy and the school is ambitious for each and every one and as a result, our Year 7 intake for both the current year and next year is almost full.

"Parents, students and staff can rest assured that the ethics and principles that have underpinned the school’s improvement over the past five years will continue to do so.”