An Abbots Langley headteacher is "very confident" that the school can improve its Ofsted ratings in the future.

Michael Lansdown, headteacher at Tanners Wood Junior Mixed and Infant School, Hazelwood Lane believes the school is improving and will continue to do so.

Following an inspection from the education watchdog last December, the school was listed as "requires improvement," with the quality of teaching and learning, the progress of children and the effectiveness of senior management being singled out for improvement.

Michael Lansdown believes the school will do better when inspected next time round, especially after a one-day visit from Her Majesty’s Inspector in March.

He said: "Definitely, very confident. Following the one day inspection that we had from Her Majesty’s Inspector, it gives us confidence that what we’re doing is right and we’re definitely on the right lines.

He added: "I can see no reason at all why we shouldn’t get a good or even better in the spring of 2015, which is when we’re likely to be re-inspected." 

In a letter to Mr Lansdown, Ofsted praised the work of the school since the inspection last December.

Marianick Ellender-Gelé wrote: "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."

The inspector added: "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 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 one lesson and one added: ‘the teacher pushes us to the limit.’"

In 2011, the school was rated as "satisfactory" but in January 2012, the head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw announced they would be replacing the "satisfactory" rating with "requires improvement." 

Michael Lansdown revealed that five teachers working at the school are currently learning different ways to teach creatively.

He said: "Obviously, teachers work very hard. We’ve got five teachers that are working with a special training company and they are looking, very much at creative ways of challenging children more, so there’s great enthusiasm there, they’re cascading that change, they’re feeding their training back into whole staff meetings. This is then being shared with colleagues."

The headteacher added: "We’ve been teaching a more creative curriculum for about two years now and I have always encouraged teachers to take risks. I’m a great believer in cross-curricular work. I think that’s how children learn; they learn the same sort of approaches across a range of subjects."