When new Marlwood headteacher Del Planter joined the school in September he said his ‘immediate goal’ was to lead the school out of special measures.

The report of a monitoring visit published by OFSTED last week suggests he might be doing just that.

This inspection was the third since the school was labelled ‘inadequate’ and placed in special measures back in July 2017.

A BBC documentary recently showed former headteacher James Pope’s attempts to improve the Alveston school in the following academic year.

The report, published by inspector Andrew Lovett said: “The interim headteacher has acted rapidly to accelerate the rate of improvement in the quality of teaching and learning that is required for the removal of special measures.”

It went on to say: “The headteacher and his senior team have successfully raised the profile of teaching and learning by working with individual teachers directly to improve their classroom practice.”

There has also been a significant improvement in the attendance of all pupils, something shown to be real problem in the past by the BBC programme.

The report also revealed that the school still had a way to go to get out of special measures.

It also stated that the ‘quality of teaching, learning and assessment remained too inconsistent’ but admitted there were ‘a number of positive signs that improvements are beginning to have an impact’

Despite improvements in GCSE results pupils continue to make less progress than in other

schools.

Progress is below that in other schools in English and the majority of other

subjects although broadly in line with the national average in mathematics.

The report stated there was too much inconsistency between the quality of teaching within some departments, with pupils telling inspectors that the progress they make depends too much on which teacher they happen to have.

To view the full report go to files.api.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50041184.