Hampton Community College’s principal has said she was “really pleased” with Government inspectors verdict her school was “improving”.

A team from Ofsted, the Government’s children’s inspectorate, were at Hampton Community College (HCC) last month for a two-day inspection and reporting inspector Maria Dawes said it was “a satisfactory and improving school”.

She said there had been an improvement in exam results in the last two years and standards were “average”, although this was an improvement.

“Better teaching and a more relevant curriculum are contributing to students’ improved progress,” she said. “Much teaching is good or better, particularly in the specialist subjects. Under the steady leadership of the principal, senior leaders are providing clear direction.

“Overcoming significant barriers, they have been successful in securing improvements in a number of aspects of the college’s work and are ambitious for further improvement.”

But she said there was a variability in standards achieved in different subjects, marking by teachers was “inconsistent” and the improvement in academic progress at GCSE level was “slow”.

Sue Demont, principal at the Hanworth Road college, said she was pleased with the report and particularly happy the positive morale of staff and students was picked up on by inspectors.

She said she was pleased the college was rated “good” in a number of areas with no facets of college life deemed “unsatisfactory”. She said it was important the inspectors had recognised the leadership team had the potential to improve HCC further.

Dr Demont said: “We are very pleased with the findings of the report, in particular those sections which praise the attitude of our students towards their college. There is considerable emphasis on the many improvements made at HCC over the past four years.”

Parents Supporting Hampton Community College – a group of college parents calling for Richmond Council to shelve plans to turn HCC into an academy run by Swedish firm Kunskapsskolan and leave the current structure and leadership team in place – said parents would continue to be “perplexed” at the academy plan following this judgement.

A spokesman said: “Throughout the report there is a recurring reference to the improvements being sought and delivered by the staff at the school. Given that many of the teaching staff must be quite unsettled by the proposed academy takeover, it is particularly remarkable and to their credit the efforts of the principal, senior leaders and teaching staff are having such a positive impact in taking the school forward.”