An Abbots Langley school has been praised for its improvements after it received a negative Ofsted report at the beginning of the year.

Tanners Wood JMI School, in Hazelwood Lane, was rated as "requires improvement" after a recent Ofsted inspection in January.

The Ofsted inspector wrote in the report that the leadership team’s impact on improving the quality of teaching has not been rapid enough since the last inspection, which took place in October 2011.

Documents state that teachers do not always plan well for lessons and on some occasions there is insufficient challenge for middle-achieving students and expectations are not high enough for the more-able pupils.

Also, in some lessons the accuracy of pupils’ work is not checked, which leads to mistakes being overlooked.

Marianick Ellender-Gelé, Her Majesty’s Inspector, visited the school on March 12 for a monitoring inspection.

Ms Ellender-Gelé said in a letter to Mr Lansdown: "After the inspection, you took appropriate action to draw up a post-Ofsted improvement plan and tackle the weaknesses, particularly the progress of more able pupils and expectations of what all pupils can achieve in lessons.

"As we visited classes, I noted that consistent approaches are used to ensure that pupils know exactly what they need to do during the lesson and what they need to do even better. When I asked a group of pupils whether they had noticed anything different since the inspection they said that more work was expected during the lesson and one added: ‘the teacher pushes us to the limit’."

She added: "There is scope for you to improve the effectiveness of this work by promoting creativity in lesson planning, encouraging teachers to share best practice and show confidence in what they do so that the school makes rapid strides towards becoming a good or better school."

Ofsted may carry out further visits and, where necessary, provide further support and challenge to the school until its inspection.

Mr Landsdown said: "That it is a piece of good news for the school and village. I want to let the community know of the great work going on at the school."