RAY Lodge Junior School is a caring, welcoming place which provides a satisfactory standard of education, according to the latest OFSTED report.

Nursery and reception classes at the school in Snakes Lane East, Woodford Green, provide a very good start to children's schooling and junior pupils make good progress.

Leadership and management are sound but standards of work among infant pupils are not as high as they should be, according to the Office for Standards in Education report.

A team of inspectors spent four days at the 550 pupil school in October concluding that it had made satisfactory progress since its last inspection six years ago.

Headteacher Kevin Baskill said: "I'm very pleased. I think the inspectors recognised in a school that has 32 languages that there is no bullying and no racism.

"Despite a large drop in income the school had a very good OFSTED and is on course to recover its financial position."

Achievements in literacy and numeracy were praised but inspectors were concerned that this might be at the expense of other curriculum subjects.

Mr Baskill said: "What came out was a national dilemma in that the whole country is being trained in numeracy and literacy and it's test driven and every school has had the problem of balancing up the curriculum in terms of having the right emphasis across all the subjects."

The headteacher was glad that inspectors singled out the high quality of teaching in the foundation stage but took issue with their conclusions over standards in the infant classes.

He said: "The report highlights that we need to improve the situation in Years 1 and 2 but what it doesn't say is that there are areas of very good practice in those years.

"We have small class sizes and the parents have high confidence in Years 1 and 2. Teachers, governors, staff, and parents are all confident about the future."