Walsall's Chuckery Primary School told to improve

Pupils at a primary school in Walsall are not always fulfilling their potential in English and maths, government inspectors have found.

Work being set pupils at Chuckery Primary School, in Lincoln Road, is not always sufficiently demanding, preventing them from making faster progress.

Bosses at the school, which currently has 481 pupils, have been told it requires improvement across the board.

Jeremy Bird, lead inspector for Ofsted, said: "Although writing and mathematics teaching is improving, teachers do not always make their expectations clear to pupils.

"Teachers do not insist that pupils use their current grammar and punctuation skills accurately in their writing or calculation strategies in their mathematics. This leads to pupils sometimes presenting work which is of lower than expected quality.

"As a result, pupils make slower rates of progress."

The report also found attendance rates at the school are 'too low' despite efforts to improve since the last Ofsted inspection in March 2014.

That report also found the school 'required improvement' - although Mr Bird concluded this time that improvements had been made.

He found the school is good at helping pupils to develop their moral, social and cultural understanding and are polite, friendly and hard-working.

He added leaders are effective in ensuring that pupils who have special educational needs or disability make good progress.

But the quality of teaching was again raised as a concern.

Mr Bird, added: "In some lessons the work that is set initially is not hard enough for some pupils, in particular for the most-able pupils and for those who need to make faster progress in order to meet end of year expectations.

"This is because too much time is spent rehearsing skills which are already sufficiently secured. This results in them not making the progress they are capable of."

The school had a high proportion of pupils from minority ethnic backgrounds when compared to other primary schools, with the majority of these being of Pakistani heritage.

The report said two thirds of pupils speak English as an additional language, which is well above the national average.

The proportion of disadvantaged pupils supported by the pupil premium is also above the national average. The pupil premium is additional funding for pupils known to be eligible for free school meals and those looked after by the local authority.

The headteacher at the school was unavailable for comment.