INSPECTORS visiting a Blackburn school saw groups of pupils openly smoking around the school site and abusing teachers, and found obscene graffiti on walls and desks.

And the inspection, carried out by education watchdog Ofsted, led to Queen's Park High School being put into special measures.

Today the contents of the damning report can be revealed for the first time.

The main findings of the inspection, highlighted in the publication of the Ofsted report yesterday, showed that:

Standards achieved by pupils were too low with results for GCSE and GNVQ examinations having fallen overall since 2001- around one in 12 of those entered for an English GCSE failed to achieve a grade.

Pupils had unsatisfactory attitudes to learning, had irregular attendance, often disrupted lessons and were verbally aggressive to teachers and teaching assistants.

Teachers failed to plan lessons properly, frequently left spelling and punctuation mistakes uncorrected, failed to control classes and accepted inappropriate behaviour from pupils.

The school, in Shadsworth Road, was visited on February 5 and 6. It was the school's third visit by inspectors in two years.

In April 2002, the inspection was critical of many aspects of the school's work, in particular in relation to the standards achieved by the pupils and the school's climate for learning.

The new report says: "The school has not acted swiftly or decisively enough to tackle the weaknesses in teaching, in the pupils' attitudes, behaviour and attendance, and in leadership and management.

"There has been some progress since the last HMI visit but the pace of improvement has been too slow overall and there remain significant weaknesses in the quality of education provided by the school."

The school was criticised for the general quality of education but individual teachers in science, mathematics, ICT, business studies and English were praised for good teaching.

Peter Morgan, director of education for Blackburn with Darwen Council, said: "As the report identifies, Queen's Park High School faces some extremely challenging circumstances.

"The new head teacher had only been in post a term when the inspection took place and the report recognises his vision for the school's future.

"We are working intensively with the head teacher and governors to address the issues in the report and support the school's recovery."