A FULL review of senior leadership and management will take place at The King John School.

Following the school being rated as inadequate, the school’s headteacher wrote to parents, highlighting a number of positive elements to the report.

The letter, seen by the Echo, revealed that an external review of governance will be undertaken, in addition to a full review of school leadership and management.

And the school acknowledged that safeguarding concerns are “clearly not acceptable” and will take immediate steps to address the issues.

The school’s lengthy letter to parents, at roughly 700 words long, focused on the positive aspects in the report.

The school also added another inspection in six months time.

The inspection was a result of complaints and concerns raised about leadership and safeguarding.

The letter said: “We were pleased that the inspectors recognised good teaching, learning and assessment enabling pupils to achieve well by the end of key stage four.

“Published school performance tables place us above national and Essex performance in GCSE English, maths, EBacc and A-level. We recently received recognition that our sixth form results for A-level place us in the top 15 per cent nationally consistently across a three year period benchmarked against other schools and colleges for A-level outcomes in 2018.”

But the letter eventually acknowledged the failings.

It stated: “Ofsted reports that leaders, including governors have not followed statutory guidance for keeping children safe, this means safeguarding is not effective.

“This is clearly not acceptable and we have taken immediate steps to address the clear priority identified in the report regarding the statutory guidance and safeguarding.

“An external review of governance will be undertaken in addition to a full review of school leadership and management to ensure strategic improvements are the focus. The report states that in recent years, pupils in Year 11 have made above average progress. However this was not maintained in 2018.

“Pupils are making better progress this year, especially disadvantaged pupils and those in Years Nine and Ten.

“We shall continue to work very hard on developing the level of challenge in each and every lesson and ensure learning activities inspire the most able well enough to work hard and achieve the highest standards.”

In the letter, headteacher Melanie McGauley, added that everyone involved in the school is “devastated.”

The letter read: “Both the school and the trust will invest heavily in undertaking a series of external reviews to ensure there is significant improvement in the areas of priority.

“Nothing will be taken for granted as we shall review everything to identify any other areas that need development and ensure there is on-going external quality assurance to make us the outstanding school we aspire to be.

“The staff and governors are devastated by the outcome as it is clearly not acceptable, but we are all determined to act swiftly and show the school at its very best through the examination results this summer. Please be assured we are reviewing and monitoring all aspects of our work in school in response.”