Grammar School goes from Outstanding to Inadequate. What next?

[Harrysutton]

My dd attends a grammar school in the north west which has just gone from outstanding to inadequate. The report is a terrible read, the report is on the school website with a letter from the Chair of Governors but no other comms. Would you expect a meeting for parents to allow an open discussion and would you be pushing for more communication?

It's Backup, by the way.

All that effort to get into an exam factory with a sexual abuse problem. I'd say pull out and go state. Maybe less pervs at Woodhey.

If the head believes it's not happening, he won't be asking about it.

^^This. Quite right @ManagementPlan

Schools should always be OFSTED ready because that basically just means good quality teaching and pupil wellbeing practices day to day. This is what most parents expectations are of school.

Ime the survey of pupils and parents isn’t totally helpful because people are drawn into the “well I attend this school and don’t want it to be seen in a bad light” opinion. I wish they did inspections more often and under more realistic settings. As someone else said the only way is up now, especially if they don’t want contracts terminated. There will be experts drawn in from outstanding schools to help now and money available to help improve. Compare the exam results with other schools and decide, although often high results can mean parents spend money on extra tuition, so again not always a true reflection of what’s really happening inside the school.

This is what I've been saying. These schools "live" on their results which are very much supported by the high entry requirements and support from parents.

I also agree that having done what it takes to get their child into the "best" school, parents don't generally want to hear that everything isn't rosy.

Do you wouldn't be bothered at all about your big burly boy growing up in an environment where sexual harassment is normalised and swept under the carpet?

Why wouldn't you want more for him than to grow up with that kind of world view?

This is one of the worst OFSTED reports I have ever read- and I've read lots. It is about the culture that runs throughout the school from Head/SLT/Teachers/ Governors/Children. It's very hard to really address this quickly and is likely to take several years and a great deal of understanding, commitment and determination by the Head- who is most likely a very significant part of the problem in how it ended up in this state- unless he is a recent appointment.

I would be surprised if the Head (and possibly some of the SLT)are not removed and a new one/s appointed. It's unlikely that the people who have created this culture will be able to change it.

I am currently supporting a new Head, two days a week for two terms, who is facing similar issues but which have been identified by him and a local authority before Ofsted have become involved. It is a tough challenge for him but he's going to be a very good Head - he did not create the culture, is open to challenge, reflective, works with people and has clear values- and will address the whole problem the school faces but it is going to take time.

Having read that the education is good but everything else is inadequate and that pupils don't feel that the school are doing enough to keep them safe I'd be removing my child.

This reminds me of when another outstanding school was downgraded to inadequate because of some appalling incidents of racism. Lots of parents rallied around then too to say the school was fine, Ofsted blowing things out of proportion etc.

But these things are hugely important. Ofsted shouldn’t overlook that they had to make safeguarding referrals during the inspection because results are good, and neither should parents.

The report and grading are required to underline the seriousness of the situation and to be the catalyst for serious change.

The ‘it doesn’t happen here’ attitude is one that is referred to every year in safeguarding training. We are repeatedly told not to believe that.

And with the Ofsted report into the Everyone’s Invited scandal, this should have been on everyone’s radar.

This happened at my dd's grammar in Kent - hadn't been inspected for donkey's years, proudly talked of their Outstanding rating, finally got inspected and were downgraded to requires improvement. The head was initially bullish and said she was going to appeal, however the latest news is she's resigned.
The SLT and acting Head do seem to be on the ball and are keeping parents in the loop as to their aims for the future. We're keeping a close eye on things, naturally, but no plans to move our dd at the moment, as we reasoned the only way now is up...

I read a lot of OFSTED reports as part of my job and this is one of the worst I have seen. It is incredibly disappointing to read the minimising comments on this thread. If my child were at the school I'd also be concerned by the very lukewarm comments in the 'quality of education' section. The positive comments made ('pupils enjoy reading'...'pupils concentrate closely on their learning') are a pretty low bar for a highly academically selective school.

As pp have said the most dangerous time for students at this school has now passed and it will now be under significant scrutiny. Nevertheless the issues described in the report are cultural and likely to be pretty deeply ingrained, and it will be hard to root them out overnight.

@noomchikka I would want to know what has actually gone on, theirs a big difference between say an attempt rape vs what went on at our school in 00s. Standards and attitudes have changed in society but truthfully kids will still be kids, back in our day which wasn't that long ago if a lad slapped my bum and he was hot it would be flirty, not good looking he might have got a slap across the face back or called a name.

Now society would like us to go running to the teachers saying Miss Miss he slapped my bum which is reflected in the OFSTED report.

Would I be all that interested if the school was brushing it under the carpet as oi X apologies to Y. Nope I wouldn't mind them brushing it under the carpet. As I grew up and went to uni it happens in clubs all the time and kids going to school and not learning through experimentation in my opinion leads to them being more vulnerable when they are older and it's more risky.

It's the same as I expect to pick him up drunk underage at least once, no doubt he will try a vape it's all about growing up. It never did us any harm the silly lads grew up into respectable men with good jobs, wives and kids. They wouldn't dream of playing away or being so flirtatious now as grown men. The girls are all strong independent woman a lot of who are either independent professionals or managers, it will occasionally come up at a drunken BBQ as hey remember when you X thought it was a good idea to do F or when YZ snuck off after school and look now they are getting married.

I really do think the report needs to be more detailed so parents can make decision whether the school is dangerous or just doesn't align with some peoples moral compass

www.google.com/amp/s/www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/once-outstanding-school-plagued-racism-25011387.

I’m guessing it’s this one.

Amanda Spielman openly stated last autumn that she expects the overall number of 'outstanding' schools to halve and this process has already begun. If there is a disproportionate effect on grammar schools then this will be because they were judged outstanding under previous frameworks which put greater emphasis on outcomes, which are inevitably very good at academically selective schools, and have been exempt from inspection for many years.

A downgrading to 'good' might therefore be expected, or possibly even 'requires improvement'. 'Inadequate' is a relatively rare judgement and it is not given lightly.

The head is a disgrace. A culture like that comes from the top, and he obviously is comfortable with the school facilitating sexual predators. (Although in their view it isn’t like that)

i would expect there are several parents who have gone to the police over specific matters and the SMT has deflected or stonewalled on behalf of specific boys.

It is important to note that there are two types of 'inadequate' OFSTED. If the inspectors have confidence in the ability of leaders to make rapid improvements it will be judged to have 'serious weaknesses'. If not, the school requires 'special measures' and this has been the judgement here. It is the most serious form of inadequate judgement and as a pp said it is relatively rare and not given lightly.

I have no insight into this particular case but from extensive experience of similar processes you can expect the following as a parent:

• the headteacher is very unlikely to return from their current sick leave. An executive headteacher will be brought in to oversee the school in the interim.
• the school will join the MAT mentioned in the COG's letter. This process will already have started even if it is not yet acknowledged publicly.
• there will be significant personnel changes at governor and SLT level. It is not unheard of for a whole SLT to tender their resignations.
• there is likely to be greater than usual turnover in the staff body. Some staff will want to stay to be part of the improvement but others will want to distance themselves from the school. Recruitment will be challenging as prospective staff will know that they are going into a high scrutiny environment, and the school will not be able to recruit early career teachers (formerly known as NQTs) while it is in special measures.

@Grumpybutfunny
I really do think the report needs to be more detailed so parents can make decision whether the school is dangerous or just doesn't align with some peoples moral compass

I'd be interested to know your take on the school being found to have an "unsafe and dismissive culture in which racism appears to be accepted."

Or there a moral compass out there that would find this acceptable?

Sexual assault is ok because the girls you went to school with are independent professionals or managers now?

Wow that's insightful, thanks.

Do you have any more hot takes for us?

Outstanding schools are often left for a ridiculous amount of years without inspection my last employment hasn't been ofsted checked in 11 years. It certainly isn't outstanding.

This.happened to.my nephews school, and incidentally the same school I went to ,was rated outstanding in 2009 and wasn't.inspected again for 10 years and only got an inspection because of a lot of complaints, the OFSTED report was awful and the school was put into special measures.

Just a little counterbalance, and this is more questions to be explored than answers of any sort. I'm a primary headteacher so know how Ofsted (but not secondary schools) work.

First of all, the inspectors entering the school would have had an awareness of the suicide of a student last year, and the criticisms directed at the school at that point. This may - or may not - have been valid. But the over-riding purpose of the inspection in that context (rightly) would have been to thoroughly test the school's safeguarding procedures. Instead of sampling three child protection files, they will have read as many as they had time for. Instead of talking with a group of pupils, they will have talked with many. This vastly increases the probability of:
(i) uncovering weak practice in the school (good), but also
(ii) encountering those students who have experienced something untoward, and who are not satisfied as to how it has been dealt with (of which there are going to be some in any secondary school; good that they are uncovering this, but not necessarily comparable with the inspection of the school up the road).

The odds were weighted against them from the beginning; they were more likely"to uncover things here than in a random inspection of a random school.

Secondly, something making me uncomfortable about the judgment - take a look at Parentview, where 93% of parents felt their children were safe (and of a sizeable sample). National averages for all Parentview responses tend to be low 80s. If you compare other high profile inadequates (recent press on Oasis Isle of Sheppey and Abbey Faversham), you've got 50% and 33% unsafe respectively. Whatever the problem here is, the parents don't seem to think there is one. I've never seen that kind of discrepancy before.

I am not - for one moment - saying the inspection was wrong. I don't know, I wasn't there. I don't believe, however, that Ofsted is a perfect system, nor that you can't find this (and other) issues in secondary schools if you dig deeply enough. None of which makes what is described in the report in any way acceptable - if anything, my comments are pointing towards this being more common in other schools than posters might think, and potentially worse than at this school?

The OP needs to speak with their child, and other parents, about their lived experience of the school, and go from there.

My son goes to this school. He's in year ten. The reason we sent him to this school is because he's a bit different. He's not LGBTQ but has a lot of friends there who are and none of them understand this report. I have had lots of contact with the school over the years and everything has always been sorted out straight away. The kids he knows are all very kind and accepting of everyone else. I have children at another school and it is totally different, it's more like when I was at school in the 90s. This report has actually really upset my son, his friends and others he has spoken to. People forget that these children love school and it's part of their identity to go there. My son has now read that the school that him and his friends go to, feel safe at and is fully supportive of them, is a place of sexual harm, racism and homophobia. They're all very upset and confused.

if anything, my comments are pointing towards this being more common in other schools than posters might think, and potentially worse than at this school?

This is what the Ofsted review into sexual abuse in schools found, and what the Everyone's Invited website demonstrated. Things are far worse than adults think, and kids don't even bother trying to talk about it.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-sexual-abuse-in-schools-and-colleges/review-of-sexual-abuse-in-schools-and-colleges

"On our visits, girls told us that sexual harassment and online sexual abuse, such as being sent unsolicited explicit sexual material and being pressured to send nude pictures (‘nudes’), are much more prevalent than adults realise. For example, nearly 90% of girls, and nearly 50% of boys, said being sent explicit pictures or videos of things they did not want to see happens a lot or sometimes to them or their peers. Children and young people told us that sexual harassment occurs so frequently that it has become ‘commonplace’. For example, 92% of girls, and 74% of boys, said sexist name-calling happens a lot or sometimes to them or their peers. The frequency of these harmful sexual behaviours means that some children and young people consider them normal.

When we asked children and young people where sexual violence occurred, they typically talked about unsupervised spaces outside of school, such as parties or parks without adults present, although some girls told us they also experienced unwanted touching in school corridors.

Children and young people, especially girls, told us that they do not want to talk about sexual abuse for several reasons, even where their school encourages them to. For example, the risk of being ostracised by peers or getting peers into trouble is not considered to be worth it for something perceived by children and young people to be commonplace. They worry about how adults will react, because they think they will not be believed, or that they will be blamed. They also think that once they talk to an adult, the process will be out of their control"

However this school didn't seem to even be following basic reporting procedures when things were flagged up.

@noblegiraffe 100% agree.

To note on the reporting procedures, it would be necessary to know what this is (we never will). There are definitely things that should be reported, and definitely things which would not (social services don't want to be dealing with a 13 year old footballer with a bruise on his shin he got playing football, for example), but there's also a zone in between where professional judgment applies, and that can differ between the inspectors and the people in school. In the countless safeguarding files that a secondary school generates, there are going to be some decisions which an inspector might have made differently. It is significant whether that lack of reporting falls in the grey zone or is a complete mishandling of a disclosure - again, something we will never know.

My son goes to this school. He's in year ten.
The kids he knows are all very kind and accepting of everyone else.

What about all the kids he doesn't know?

It only takes a small minority to cause problems. It also only takes a very small number of victims of behaviour as described in the report for a school to be failing if it isn't being dealt with effectively, regardless of the positive "lived experience" of other pupils at the school who haven't been the victim of such behaviour and therefore have a positive view of the place.

You can't decide what mine and many others experiences are. People are asking about opinions from people whose children go to the school. If you had read my message you would have got a clear and true reply to those questions. A lot of children are very upset with the way it is being reported, and about people who have no idea judging and commenting on essentially them and people they love and care about. You have no idea what people like you are doing to the kids who go there. I can only give an opinion on my child and the very wide friend group he has, and also the experience I have with the staff. I can't, give my opinion on something I know nothing about. Maybe we should all stick to what we actually know, instead of accusing a whole school of something they know nothing about.