A Huddersfield headteacher has described the “trail of devastation” which Ofsted inspectors left in their wake.

In her end-of-year summary sent out to all parents, Lepton CE (VC) Junior, Infant and Nursery School’s Lynn Lawson writes candidly about the turmoil caused following the November 2012 inspection.

Inspectors downgraded the school from Good to Inadequate requiring ‘Special Measures’, the worst possible rating.

At the time the rating was vigorously opposed by the school, parents and Huddersfield MP Barry Sherman, who described the report as “unfair.”

Unusually, it was also two grades below the Church of England report, which found the school to be Good.

In her summary, Mrs Lawson said: “The year got off to a bad start, little did I know it was going to get even worse.

“Two days before the start of term, the school was a building site. The rewire had over-run, work was not complete and the school was devoid of its contents. It was doubtful that we would open on time, but somehow we did.

“The result however, was that we were playing catch-up from day one.”

She describes other changes at the school, including the high number of new staff, two of whom were new to teaching, before writing: “Then Ofsted came. They didn’t want to know about the rewire, they didn’t want to know about the staff turnover, they didn’t want to know about the hard time we had getting the school ready to open on time.

“They were interested in last year’s SATS – we had achieved the lowest results in maths for some time. Only 71% achieved level 4.

“The fact that three children (12%) had missed achieving level 4 in maths by one mark each seemed to be irrelevant. It was the data that mattered.

“We didn’t matter. Children didn’t matter and circumstances certainly didn’t matter. They left a trail of devastation in their wake.

“To say staff morale was low is an understatement. Shock and anger were the abiding emotions. We took the criticisms very personally and the hurt went extremely deep.

“Our data compared well with other schools not judged as inadequate in recent inspections.”

Since those dark days, the school has been moving forward rapidly.

A second church inspection, just published, has again rated Lepton as Good.

Mrs Lawson is working well with the HMI Inspector brought in to monitor the school.

HMI inspectors are trained to a higher level than Ofsted inspectors.

This month the school has just published its best Key Stage 2 results for many years, exceeding both staff targets and national averages.

Looking forward to 2013/14, Mrs Lawson added: “We are confident that this will be a good year and we will be able to put the past year behind us.

“Test results and hard work should, we hope, see us taken out of special measures in the autumn term.

“However, the journey doesn’t end there. We will strive to continually improve.”