STAFF at a nursery school have been given top marks by inspectors for helping children make the grade.

A team from Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) has praised Lee Royd Nursery School, Accrington, for making 'satisfactory progress' since the last report in 1995.

But further improvement has been hindered by a lack of structured planning and monitoring of children, according to the inspectors. Staff have been asked to become involved more in children's play time to make it more imaginative.

The Royds Street school, which is funded by the Local Education Authority, employs three teachers and five nursery nurses and currently teaches 109 children aged between three and five.

Teaching is described as 'very good' in 15 per cent of lessons and 'good' in almost half of all classes.

Most children achieve satisfactory learning outcomes by the time they are ready to enter primary school, although some show weakness in maths.

The report states: "The school has moved forward satisfactorily and has suitably overcome most of the previously identified weaknesses. Children are confident, happy and secure and they make good progress in most areas of learning. However, planning does not yet include all aspects of learning in a comprehensive way and there is no formal procedure for monitoring the curriculum."

Chairman of governors Bernard Holden, said: "The governors and staff are delighted that this report highlights the school's strengths.

"The few areas raised by Ofsted as key issues for action have already been identified by us and the school is implementing strategies to improve still further."

Headteacher Valerie Taylor added: "We are pleased the inspectors have recognised that the standards achieved in our last inspection have been either maintained or improved."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.