A NURSERY School has slipped from top of the class to struggling to make the grade following an inspection by Ofsted.
Tunstall Nursery School, in Addiscombe, was rated as "outstanding" in April 2011.
Last month Ofsted reinspected the school and judged it as "requires improvement".
Staff had reason to feel aggrieved because the school was rated as "good" in three out of four categories, including achievement, teaching and behaviour.
But the inspector criticised its leadership team for failing to monitor the quality of teaching regularly enough.
The report, published this week, also said their feedback to staff was "not effective" and that more-able children, and those with English as an additional language, were not making enough progress.
Tunstall was inspected two days after the new early years inspection framework was adopted.
Head teacher Diane Ward said the school had an action plan in place to deal with the issues raised by Ofsted.
She said: "I'm disappointed because I think Tunstall is an outstanding nursery.
"We did have a couple of days where we were upset about it, but now we're not at all.
"Now we honestly feel we can put this right. We're not feeling defeated by it.
"We hope very much to get back to our proper status within a year.
"What was sad was taking down the 'outstanding' banner outside the school, but we might keep it and put it up again one day."
Ofsted said that staff work well together as a team and parents spoke highly of the care shown towards their children.
