ONE of South Lakeland’s smallest schools has been ordered to make ‘significant improvements’ by the education watchdog.

Ofsted graded Grayrigg CE School, near Kendal, as ‘inadequate’ overall and said it found weaknesses in leadership, management and teaching after a summer inspection.

Inspector Jean Kendall reported that there were insufficient systems in place relating to monitoring, reviewing and planning to enable improvements at the 35-pupil school.

Teaching quality was scored ‘satisfactory’, with standards declining since the last inspection in 2007 and children’s achievements in writing ‘lagging behind’ those in reading and maths.

Improvements have also been ordered in Early Years provision to enable reception-age children to make more rapid progress.

Ms Kendall said: “Leadership and management at all levels are inadequate because improvement planning is not followed through with sufficient rigour and a small but significant minority of parents and carers find communication with the school difficult.”

Head Denise Gallagher was unavailable for comment but a statement from the governors read: “The school has had a very challenging 18 months in terms of staff shortage and governing body changes and this has impacted greatly on the areas highlighted.

“Everyone at the school is totally committed to bringing about the required improvements.”

But the report did praise ‘some good teaching’, identified pupils’ behaviour as being consistently good and said a previously disrupted governing body was developing ‘strongly’.