What exactly happens when a school fails?

[Blewbirds]

Local village primary in a very naice village has had the most damning ofsted I've ever read. What will happen now? Will the school get more resource? Force the governors who didn't act to resign?

Forced academisation?

files.api.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50076835

Probably forced academisation - which usually makes them financially worse off.
Lots of help but even more scrutiny.

There are several issues here which have given rise to this calamity I think. Blewbury is gorgeous! Love your gardens!

The Head isn’t really working for the school with all her heart is she? What has she been doing with the British Council? She’s dropped the ball at school, that’s for certain. She’s going anyway so that’s a blessing.

The Governors have been her cheer leaders it seems. Not holding her to account is a massive failing. They also don’t seem capable of taking their role seriously.

The Head has not ensured effective teaching and learning and that’s not forgivable. She’s incompetent and the Governors have turned a blind eye.

It’s a CofE school so it could become one of their academies in the future but what good that will do is anyone’s guess. The LA has been worried enough to offer training but with little success it would appear.

This whole set up sounds cosy and twee without any rigour to the education on offer. The new Head will have a massive task and the LA/Diocese should replace all the Governors with an interim GB who will be experienced. This shower must go. The teachers will then be held to account and the school will produce a detailed action plan which will require evidence to judge its effectiveness as time goes by. Ofsted will be back. More input will come from the La but the school won’t get more money. It will have to dig deep to get out of this and get staff on side. There will be turbulence as a new regime kicks in. There always is. Expect 2 years before real improvements are embedded.

It may not become an academy but it must be rigorously monitored by its GB and the LA. The LA should have red flagged it anyway and I think that’s why they were already offering support. The Head was ill and it’s floundered. It’s awful to read this report but it can be turned around with hard work, the right skills and everyone knowing what a good school looks like. Over stating progress is never overlooked by Ofsted. If clearly screams incompetent. I hope they write a coherent and deliverable plan and make changes very quickly so children can catch up and flourish and parents get on board with the changes. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

It is not the worst report I have read but it is fairly damning. This is a school which has been going slowly down-hill for a few years as I read the Ofsted report.
There are issues all across the school starting with safeguarding and ending with teaching.
The headteacher retiring at Easter after 22 years will have been a positive as it will allow someone else to come in and start to improve the school. What should ideally happen is that the governing board need to be replaced by an Interim Executive Board, which is a small number of experienced people who will be able to make decisions quickly and effectively to improve the school as quickly as possible. Absolutely top of the list is getting the safeguarding sorted out.
Whether this will actually happen is up to the diocese, they may have a different view point on the subject but they clearly had concerns over the school which have now been realised. I suspect the outcome of the inspection has come as a very large shock to parents and to staff.

Their web site doesn’t say who the Governors are! That’s very odd. It’s also VC so the Diocese have less input than VA.

What is a VC and VA?

Voluntary Controlled is a C of E school which doesn’t own it’s buildings, employ its own staff or do it’s own admissions. Generally they follow Local Authority's procedures and protocols. Voluntary Aided schools have much more control over their affairs. They are the employer, the admission authority and they own the buildings. They still get their money from the LA though. Not from the church.

Either type of school could become an Academy under the CofE banner. However this is not always an advantage and Blewbury is a Voluntary Controlled school so would be working closely with the LA. Not so much with the Church. I’m sure all
Options will be considered but being a forced academy might not be the best route. Hopefully the new Head and interim Governors can turn it around without an enforced change of status which can be a distraction.

That looks similar to dsis' school, only less damning.

What happened there in the near future:
Headteacher sent a message out to parents saying it wasn't the school; it was nasty Ofsted.
The governors sent out a message to say they "resigned in protest".
Headteacher then sent out a message saying the report had triggered such stress that she was now signed off due to stress and had got to seriously consider giving up....
End of the year, she announced she couldn't return due to stress, and several other teachers left. A fair number of families left.
Dsis' dc spent a year being taught by supply teachers with the classes getting smaller and smaller.
At the end of a year I think she finally realised that the above was all rubbish (as I'd been telling her since the report) and moved schools to the one she'd said "over her dead body". They did much better there.

Realistically, the head and governors (who'd spent the entire time telling the head that she was totally right and never challenging anything) would have been told to resign. The school was forced into an academy, and given a year to improve before they sent in the heavy mob. The irony was that as dsis moved her dc the funding and heavy mob came in and I believe it improved quite rapidly.

I have to admit to having queried a few times things dsis said that didn't sound brilliant, but if someone like the head tells her she's brilliant, she believes them. Which is kind of sweet, but also at times a liability.

I have to admit to having queried a few times things dsis said that didn't sound brilliant, but if someone like the head tells her she's brilliant, she believes them. Which is kind of sweet, but also at times a liability.

I am often flabbergasted at the lack of judgement by parents over decisions made by schools.

Maria The first incident was when she was applying. They weren't in the catchment, and some distance away. So she asked one of the governors how to increase her chances (standard LA admission criteria). His reply:
"You need to go to all the open afternoons (4 of them) and speak to the head and any governors attending to make sure she knows you're definitely interested. You then need to ask a governor to speak up for you on the admission."

I told her that:

1. He was probably hoping for a backhander, which is disgraceful and should be dismissed.
2. If he wasn't then his knowledge of school admissions was so woefully lacking he shouldn't be in a responsible role like a governor so should be dismissed.

She said: He was a lovely man and she was sure he knew what he was talking about.
The worrying thing is that she is reasonably intelligent, just hopelessly gullible at times.

That is quite . I would probably go with your second hypothesis, as my experience tells me that while incompetence is rife in school governance, out and out corruption isn’t.

Voluntary Controlled is a C of E school which doesn’t own it’s buildings, employ its own staff or do it’s own admissions

Just to correct this slightly, a VC school's buildings are usually owned by a charitable foundation, exactly the same as a VA school. The rest of this is right however - staff are employed by the LA and the LA is the admission authority.

Not the V Controlled schools I know. Their land and buildings are owned by the LA. They have foundation governors appointed by the church but there isn’t a foundation owning the property. Well not at the ones whose governing bodies I’ve clerked anyway! I guess there are differences. My DC went to our local VC school and it was part of a campus of 3 schools but the VC school was just one. Definitely LA owned but of course Blewbury might be different.

I have met many excellent governors who are well trained and really do understand their role. They are not just cheerleaders and they are professional. There are weaknesses in some schools where governors are not sufficiently robust to challenge the Head and don’t have sufficient skills to interpret data and then understand how to improve the school. Must governors I know are up to the job and take it seriously.

I'm not saying there aren't VC schools where all the land and buildings are owned by the LA but that is unusual. In the vast majority of cases it is a charitable foundation, although the LA may own the playing fields and possibly the car park. However, it isn't really relevant to the subject of this thread.

Wow. That’s really bad. And the casual way it mentions that the head is leaving and the governors haven’t recruited anyone new yet... eek! Who’s leading the school at the moment?

Well yes. Who owns the buildings is besides the point!

The Head wrote to parents on 25 April and said a new Head had been appointed so this could have happened after the inspection. The Head has been absent and normally in these circumstances, the Deputy takes over. Sometimes an experienced Head from elsewhere might be a mentor. Sometimes a recently retired Head might be enticed back for a short period. Whatever the case, a school with difficulties and a Head off sick won’t be having an easy time. Treading water is about the best that parents can expect.

Hopefully the new Head will be capable of dealing with the challenges ahead. As the Governing body are poor, the new Head will need to work with far more experienced Governors who can turn schools round. They need to work as a team.

That's a really bad ofsted. They've all been cruising at the top and show little regard for the DC who will leave with lower achievement than they should. They should be taken over by a CofE MAT

Forced acadamisation. Remove governing body and replace with an IEB. Possibly (probably) replace head teacher. No extra funding though, I shouldn't think.

The Head is already going! Read the thread. Not all inadequate schools are forced to be academies immediately. It will really depend on the capacity of the new governors and head to improve the school and what support is offered by the LA.

They are being forced to academize. They weren't given a choice. Most of the governors have gone bar a few who put forward a case to be kept on. They won't hire a head until they become part of an academy. This looks to be rather a long road.

OP if the school starts going the same way @witchend describes, please remove your children immediately. I was an incoming governor into a school where exactly the same thing happened and those children will never get their education back.

We ended up an “orphan” school for a couple of years (there are currently many in England) no academy chain was interested and the LA effectively abandoned us

The Ofsted Report for Blewbury was published on 13 May. The date of the OPs post. So, are you saying, Patty, that they have removed the governing body, decided how to manage the transition to academy and it’s also been decided to become an academy in less than a week? (Friday was 17 May) One assumes this was on the cards prior to 13 May. Otherwise their decision- making is unbelievably swift. One assumes C of E will be the MAT. There is nothing in the public domain about this so have parents had a letter?

Headteacher sent a message out to parents saying it wasn't the school; it was nasty Ofsted. The governors sent out a message to say they "resigned in protest".

Agree that if the school behaves anything like this you need to get your children out ASAP. That is an appallingly bad Ofsted report. The school needs a complete change of management. It is good that the head is leaving but the governors also need to be replaced.

There was a meeting at the village hall for the entire community in which it was announced that they are being forced to academize. The governs have been replace bar a few.

The ofsted report was published in May but the visit happened months ago and action was already started.