A TAVISTOCK junior school has been placed in 'special measures' due to the inadequacy of the quality of teaching and pupils' achievement and a slowness by school leaders in bringing about improvement.

St Peter's Church of England Junior School is receiving specialist literacy and numeracy support after an Ofsted inspection revealed that pupils did not have a secure knowledge and understanding of the basic skills in English and maths as a result of ineffective teaching.

The school, which was rated as 'good' in its previous Ofsted report, was judged 'inadequate' in three out of four categories with behaviour and safety of pupils also requiring improvement.

The newly appointed headteacher of the federated St Rumon's Infants and St Peter's Junior C of E schools is Chris Conners, who will take over after Christmas.

Mr Conners said he was determined to see every child excel — while the chair of governors felt the school was being 'driven forward' thanks to extra support from the local authority.

Inspectors, who observed teaching in 12 lessons, said teachers did not set high enough expectations of what pupils could achieve to ensure they made the sustained and necessary progress.

They did not always provide work that met the needs of pupils with different abilities and did not question pupils effectively to check for understanding or to move them on when they were ready to tackle more challenging activities.

Pupils' work was not checked rigorously enough and although leaders had introduced a new marking and feedback policy last year, this was not being used consistently by teachers.

Pupils' progress had declined over recent years, especially in mathematics, said inspectors.

The results for pupils who left the school in 2014 indicated a further decline in progress in maths and a marked decline in reading.

Writing achievement at the school was also inadequate.

In terms of leadership the report said that the school had failed to secure enough improvement in teaching to reverse the decline in pupils' achievement and senior leaders had not tackled the requirement to raise the achievement of the most able pupils identified in the previous inspection.

A significant proportion of parents who spoke to an inspector or completed the parent view questionnaire were concerned that the school was not engaging with parents enough and were not listened to.

Pupil premium funding was not being used effectively to accelerate eligible pupils' progress — consequently the gap between the attainment of pupils eligible for support and other pupils nationally was not closing.

In some classes where the learning activities failed to interest the pupils they became distracted, chatted socially and disturbed other pupils' concentration but behaviour in the playground and around school was often good, said inspectors.

The Ofsted report, which was compiled after the inspection in September, did praise two strengths of the school.

It found that the pupils were well cared for and felt safe, this was also the view of the majority of parents — and that pupils were helped with their spiritual, social and cultural understanding with a wide range of additional activities and residential visits.

The local authority has increased its level of support to the school and to the governing body.

The school will be led this term by Jane Byrne, who has been designated a national leader of education by the National College for Teaching and Leadership and she offers expertise to schools in difficulties.

She said Devon County Council was already providing St Peter's with specialist support and a fresh audit of the maths and literacy provision had been undertaken.

Staff had also received specialist training.

New head Mr Conners said: 'I expect my staff to work hard and have high expectations of every pupil and I expect the children to work hard in return with the support of their families.

'I believe if you are dedicated to what you are doing then you can achieve whatever you want to achieve.

'It is essential that we restore the academic rigour necessary to ensure the children achieve the best they possibly can.'

New head of governors Gareth Dempster said: 'We are obviously all very disappointed at the Ofsted verdict and we are all working hard to turn the school around as soon as possible.

'The governors were delighted to be able to appoint Chris Conners as headteacher and we are confident he is the man to lead both schools to excellence.

'But in the meantime we are extremely pleased with the huge amount of support we are receiving and we know that Jane Byrne is driving the school forward this term.'