Sorry - this is long. My DD is now in Y5 and the school has had increasingly poorer OFSTED reports since she started in reception. We’ve stuck with the school because it does some things well, and because my older DD (now at secondary school), who joined in Y2 after a house move, seemed to flourish there, socially, gaining loads of confidence. I also reasoned why the results weren’t so good, e.g. lots of small faith schools in the town, very mixed ability cohort, changes in head teacher, one-off badly behaving year group.
The school has promised to address its issues for the past 4 or 5 years and it also became an academy 2 years ago, so I had reason to be hopeful. Having just looked at the SATS results for 2015, I can see little evidence of change. The school ranks in the bottom 20% of the county. It’s where you might expect it to be given all the reasons I came up with above. However, I’ve now looked at the results (level 4 and 5 SATS) of similar schools in the same town and see that they are performing miles better and most of them have more disadvantaged pupils and more children with English as a second language. The ones that have the same amount of disadvantaged pupils and children with EAL do astonishingly better.
With regards DD1, looking back from the advantage of a good secondary school, that has stretched her beyond anything we knew she was capable of, I can see that she and her primary school peers weren’t pushed as high as they could have been.
So, I have lost faith in DD’s school helping her to fulfill her personal potential and I’m resigned to making sure I fill in the gaps at home but, on the other hand, what about all the other children and why should I have to spend our family time doing more school work? The Academy Chain works like a silent partner. We’ve never received any communications directly from them. When proposing to take over the school they mentioned an action plan but I have never seen it and couldn’t find it on the school website. Do you think I should contact them directly or do I have to contact the school governors (who all changed. And there are now only 2 parent governors)? I could at least ask to see the action plan couldn’t I? I’m feeling pretty powerless though. The head teacher is not receptive to negative feedback however nicely put. What are parents supposed to do when a school fails to improve?
Oh and this is not a teacher bashing thread. My DD’s have had fabulous teachers at the school but they can only do what the SMT expect of them.
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Inadequate primary school not getting better. Feeling powerless as a parent.
18 replies
ithinkthereforeiam · 31/12/2015 11:21
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