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?

It's also on the village Facebook page and the schools website.

Omg! This report is a shocker!!

Resigning is not the same as being removed. However, that is a lightening fast decision to be an academy and appoint new governors. How can they possibly have suitable Governors lined up? Unless a decison had already been taken and the Governors did not resign: they were pushed?? Just seems ultra quick.

OK. They started this coup before the publication of the report. I obviously do not have the facebook page to hand. I could not find it on the web site earlier. Lets hope the new Chair and Interim Head know how to turn a school around.

Actually, that letter does not say it has become an Academy. So at the moment it is not, one assumes.

With on only 165 pupils in middle class area there is really no excuse, None. All our local schools are 3 or 4 forms per year. All are good to great schools.

This is an IEB situation. So the governing board of the school has been removed by the LA and replaced by the interim executive board. The chair Kevin Moyes if you look him up has been involved in IEBs before so that is a positive.The purpose of an IEB is to make rapid managerial decisions and with the new acting head move the school forward as quickly as possible.
This is in my mind exactly the right thing to do but the reality is that over the next 12 months it will probably become an academy as part of a MAT. Regrettably having been involved in IEBs one thing that will happen is that things will get worse before they get better as the IEB starts to ask more and more questions of the school. For the pupils it is probably going to be positive as the teaching will be better than it clearly has, for the staff it is going to be difficult and they will need to get to improve.

I'm not sure how middle class the intake is any more. This is the school that always has places. The school has had poor results for quite a while. A lot of parents in the village have opted to send their kids to nearby village schools or private. It became fairly clear a long time ago that the head was more focussed on enrichment activities like residentials etc than the academic results.

The school presumably has places because parents do not like it. Some, as you say, will afford private and others given it a swerve. The challenge is to make it attractive to all prospective parents. 165 is a fairly normal village school size but I assume it should be 30 PAN x 7 = 210. So lots of spaces and, as a result, financial issues one would expect. Plus probably mixed age groups to save money.

The school will now be forced to look at pupil progress, forensically, and ensure the children do their best. They will have to embed a progress tracking scheme so they know how well children are doing and what needs to be done to help them impove. There will not be a hiding place. I can see that this might be difficult for teachers if there has been a lax SLT that has not focussed on quality of teaching and learning. They will now be asked to do this and re-focus their efforts. This is likely to upset some who presumably liked the previous set up which was probably quite cosy.

However, strong leadership can ensure strong teachers come to the school. Some teachers may well see this as an opportunity and not a threat. It will not be overnight success (definitely not) but it is possible to improve and then, I think, the C of E MAT will swoop!

If the Head's been Head there for 22 years (i think a previous poster said) how did it get Good last time with the same Head?

I think there was considerable surprise when it got a good last time and that was used as an excuse to not sort lots of things. The governors clearly weren't up the job and didn't hold the head to account. I think many hoped she'd just retire rather than be pushed.

Sometimes coasting schools were not called out and, if the progress and results were average, many on the outside, including Ofsted, would overly worry. The problem sets in when Ofsted inspections became more challenging and the children who would be likely to make the best progress and get the best results, disappear to other schools. Ofsted can only look at current stats and cohorts. They would note the school has lots of vacancies.

There has been, presumably, a decline in standards and progress since the last inspection and it is right that schools are held to account for decline and doing little about it that has any real effect. They proably did not even check to see if any initiative or the school improvement plan was actually improving anything. It seems they focussed on other initiatives.

would not overly worry.

Thanks