A CHEPSTOW Primary School that was devastated by fire in 2011 has been told its performance is adequate but that it is in need of ‘significant improvement’.

A new Estyn report, published in December, says Thornwell Primary School is performing adequately in areas such as achieving good standards of speaking and listening.

Pupils with additional learning needs are making good progress and there is good provision in the foundation phase.

The inspector, Meinir Howells, said that despite the devastating fire that destroyed the Foundation Phase building, staff have worked collaboratively to provide a welcoming, well-resourced learning environment.

Ms Meinir found that the children’s wellbeing, care, support and guidance, learning environment was good.

However, she said the school is in need of significant improvement and found that many pupils make only satisfactory progress with their learning overall, many pupils’ standards of writing are not consistently good enough and that they do not take enough care with their handwriting and the presentation of their work.

Ms Howells said planning to develop literacy and numeracy skills progressively across the curriculum is not well developed and teaching does not challenge more able pupils’ sufficiently.

She said the school has not addressed many of the recommendations from the previous inspection but said the newly formed senior leadership team work well together to identify whole school priorities and that partnerships with parents and the comprehensive school are good.

She makes six recommendations which include improving the standards of writing across the curriculum, improving the consistency and accuracy of teachers’ marking and assessments and ensuring that the governing body holds the school to account more rigorously.