Tame Valley Community School

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Tame Valley Community School is an inner city primary school in Bromford, Birmingham.

The school serves an inner city area of very high density, including numerous 20 storey tower blocks, maisonettes and row after row of terraced housing, mainly council housing. The school is one of the most deprived in the country, with the number of pupils entitled to free school meals being described by Ofsted as being "well above average".

The age range of pupils at the school are 3-11 and the school currently has 227 pupils on roll, making it below average in size. It is a community primary school with a mixed gender of pupils. The school's headteacher is Mrs Pamela Read-Law and the school's chair of governors is Mr Mark Burbidge.

When the school was inspected by Ofsted in July 2006 and the report concluded:

"In accordance with section 13 (3) of the Education Act 2005, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector is of the opinion that this school requires special measures because it is failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education and the persons responsible for leading, managing or governing the school are not demonstrating the capacity to secure the necessary improvement. At its last inspection the school had been judged to have serious weaknesses and, although there was initially some improvement, this was not sustained and the quality of education then deteriorated. The school itself has accurately evaluated its overall effectiveness as inadequate."

The school was blasted by the school inspectors and will not be subject to regular inspection until it provides its students with a satisfactory standard of education.

However, the school works in some very difficult circumstances, for example, the socio-economic circumstances of it's pupils are "well below average". The government are fully aware of these difficult circumstances and as a result the school benefits from a number of special initiatives. Many parents in the local area could be described as being very unsupportive, with many using the school as a babysitting service, however, the school has now been judged to have satisfactory attendance, although there are still higher than average numbers of unauthorised absence.