PUPILS and staff at one of York’s largest primary schools are celebrating Ofsted success.

Westfield, which has 571 pupils in the west of the city, was rated “satisfactory” by government inspectors when they visited earlier this month, with many areas accessed rated as “good”.

The inspection team looked in detail at a number of key areas, including the impact of teaching on pupils’ attainment, particularly in English and maths, and to what extent there are weaknesses that are holding pupils back.

Ofsted awarded “good” grades for leadership and management and capacity for improvement, describing the head teacher’s leadership as “outstanding”.

Lead inspector Derek Pattinson said: “Under the head teacher’s relentless pursuit of school improvement, areas of the school’s work, such as the quality of teaching and learning at Westfield are improving strongly.

“Despite the many clear improvements in teaching, the overall impact on learning and achievement remains satisfactory because improvements are not yet consistent across the school.

“Robust systems, policies and procedures are implemented, monitored and evaluated rigorously and are consistently leading to steadily improving academic outcomes.”

Head teacher Tracey Ralph has been at Westfield since January 2009 and she has made many new appointments to the school, including the majority of the new leadership team. Mrs Ralph said: “I was particularly pleased to see that the quality and impact of effective team work and high morale at Westfield were both recognised in the report, since teamwork is the key.” The inspection found areas where the school needs to improve include:

• Teachers should share ideas so all lessons are good and promote learning well.

• The school should work with parents and carers to improve attendance further.

• The school needs to improve the ways adults check how well the younger children are learning.