A headteacher has defended her school and the achievements of its pupils after it was told it needed to improve further by Ofsted.

Kelmscott School in Walthamstow last week received feedback since being graded as requiring improvement by the watchdog earlier this year.

In a report inspector Carmen Rodney said an action plan implemented by the school is having success and praised the school’s leadership, but said standards must be raised further.

Headteacher Lynette Parvez said she is “immensely proud” of her students, many of whom come to the school with low levels of literacy and speak English as a second language.

Ms Parvez claims the school was ‘caught out’ by controversial changes to GCSE grading made by the government two years ago.

When the pass mark was altered many students were downgraded from a C to a D, she said.
But the number of students achieving grades A to C increased by 12 per cent in 2013.

Ms Parvez added: “In 2012 we got caught out by the grade boundaries changing.

“We were actually doing very well and then when boundaries for an English pass changed we just plummeted.

“Our GCSE pass grade for A to C is 45 per cent, which is still under the national average, but you cannot compare children like ours to other schools.”

Sixty per cent of the children who attend the Markhouse Road school speak English as a second language and eighty percent come from a deprived background.

Kelmscott recently won an Educational Outcome Award from the SSAT, which supports schools and teachers.

It is in the top 12 percent nationally for the measure of improvement made by children from when they start at the school to when they leave.

Mrs Parvez said: “We are working our way back up. We have improved by over ten percent already.

“This is a good school, if we get less able pupils we will assist them to get the best grades that they can. “ More than twenty students left the school with A or A* grades last year.