A RIBBLE Valley school is furious after being branded "underachieving" -- even though its exam results are above national averages.

Government education watchdog Ofsted classed St Michael and St John's RC School in Lowergate, Clitheroe, as an underachieving school under a tough new grading system.

But today head teacher Vincent Murray blasted the move as "misleading" and said it had caused "considerable concern and confusion" among the school community.

He said: "This is a global and rather pejorative term which labels the whole school. Given the sustained level of high achievement in national results since league tables began, this term is demonstrably untrue."

The new "underachieving" category was introduced by Ofsted in January. Advice to inspectors issued by Ofsted states that a judgement that a school is underachieving should be based on the school's results not being as good as they could be, evidence that results are not improving sufficiently and significant concerns about aspects of teaching, learning, leadership and management.

Being classed as an underachieving school is not as serious as either of the two other unsatisfactory categories available to inspectors -- that the school has serious weaknesses or requires special measures.

The Ofsted report on St Michael and St John's, prepared after a two-day inspection in January, said 94 per cent on 11-year-olds at the school achieved the national target level in English, 90 per cent did so in maths and 100 per cent in science. The report also said under-fives made very good progress, especially in acquiring literacy skills, pupils were very well-behaved and the school worked closely with parents.

But it said that at the start of Year 2, many children made very limited progress in literacy skills, and numeracy skills were not built on enough. The report said that on too many occasions teaching had weaknesses and work was not always matched to pupils' abilities.

It also said strategies for monitoring and evaluating the school's work and the management of special educational needs could be improved.

Mr Murray said the school, which has 227 pupils, was still considering the report's observations and the judgements made by the inspectors.

He added: "However, as one of the first schools in the country to be inspected under the framework we do have considerable reservations that it could give a very misleading impression.

"It should be made clear that we were offered a short inspection of two days largely because we have a record of consistent high achievement.

"Having spoken with colleagues in similar situations, I am very worried the new framework will work against Ofsted's stated intention of raising educational standards."

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