Parents have rallied round to show their support for the head and staff at a Bath primary school which has been told it needs to improve by Ofsted.
Inspectors have downgraded Twerton Infants from "good" to "requires improvement" despite finding that the vast majority of its work is above average.
A new Ofsted framework means that because the school has been criticised in the leadership and management section of the report, the overall score has had to come down.
Head teacher Paul Mattausch Burrows, who has led the 179-pupil Poolemead Road school for 11 years and is himself a trained Ofsted inspector, believes the new style of inspections could worry parents and demoralise schools.
He said: "Although the school is providing an even better standard of education than it was at its last inspection, the new judgments make it appear that the school is now less effective."
He added that evidence from the Department for Education showed that the school's results were improving annually.
The inspectors had a number of positive things to say about Twerton Infants, including that standards had regularly been well above the national average, that teaching was good overall, with high expectations of pupils and interesting, practical lessons.
The report also said that pupils were well-behaved and en joyed learning from an early age.
Out of the four main categories, three – achievement of pupils, quality of teaching and behaviour and safety of pupils – were all judged to be good.
However, there was criticism for leadership and management, with concerns that the monitoring of teaching standards was "overgenerous" and that the board of governors was not involved in the way it should be.
Parent governor Louise Page, whose six-year-old son Tobias is in Year 2, said she was devastated when she read the report.
The 24-year-old, who lives in Whiteway, said: "It almost made me cry, because it felt like such a let down of the system.
"The school is fantastic, the results they get are fantastic, but all Ofsted cared about was seeing the specific data for each child, in such detail.
"I am so proud of the school and what they are doing for all the children around here, it is just amazing."
Another parent governor Naomi Trentham, 34, has two children at the school, seven- year-old Susannah in Year 2 and four-year-old Judah in the nursery.
She said: "We know that things are going really well at the school. Children are soaring, our results are amazing, for the past six years running we have been above the national average. Of course there is always room for improvement, but we know we are a good school."
Mr Mattausch Burrows added that all the staff and governors felt the inspection process could have been more positive, but they were now working on the areas that needed improving.
● Are you a parent at Twerton Infants? What do you think of the Ofsted report? Go to www.bathchronicle.co.uk to leave your comments.
