Hill House gets 'inadequate' OFSTED report

[LocalEditorKensingtonChelsea]

This article from today's Guardian might interest some of you.

Really hope for the children's sake this place gets shut down. The school was asked to improve last year and ignored OFSTED. How any parent could consider keeping their child at a school which lets people wander in and out, has no fire procedures, no registers and which uses tutors to pump the pupils up the next rung of the public school ladder beggars belief. Tantamount to child neglect. There are plenty of decent state primary's in the area btw.

YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS I guess it is the perfect reply to what you just posted……..
Nomina sunt consequentia rerum…...

So you're in favour of institutions remaining open that are putting children at risk? Interesting perspective Sloane mum. To each his own (or whatever that is in Latin)

Not sure why we've switched languages in this thread? But I'm pretty sure that changing the goal posts isn't going to work. The truth does hurt sometimes. Salve.

castigat ridendo mores

Ooh Latin aren't you both clever.

I can do it to look -

absentem laedit cum ebrio qui litigat

Not that I am suggesting you have been at the wine this early in the day but you get the point. You are too invested in the school to see this logically.

too not to.

sum es est sumus estis sunt

Collis Domus est insufficiens...

sum es est sumus estis sunt

Afraid my Latin is limited to that which appears in 'Life of Brian' but as someone else has already pointed out it's a meaningless distraction from the point at issue (unless of course you went to HH too and learnt your Latin there?).

There are plenty of HH parents, staff and pupils who do agree with the OFSTED criticisms - like the poster above who said they'd removed their DC or this ex-pupil commenting on your petition

"There is a huge problem with hill house. All you need to do is talk to the teachers at the 'bottom' of the process, and the pupils who use to go there. I myself was a pupil at Hill House, and I can say for sure that my opinion of the school is shared with many. Hill House fails to prepare pupils for rigorous competition which takes place in the last couple of years at the school. yes, the children are happy, but we were only happy because the teacher used to walk in ten minutes late every lesson, and we would run around and throw things around the room. The teachers are simply not paid enough, and that is the reason why the school has changed so quickly. A couple of years ago, Hill House had some perfectly capable teachers, now the best teachers have left the school. The teachers have no motivation to teach, and Hill House is seriously struggling. No wonder all ex pupils want to see the school get shut down."

This is confirmed in the OFSTED report where in response to a questionnaire more than half of the teachers either 'disagreed or disagreed strongly that leaders promote their professional development'.

But as another comment on the petition says:

"I can sit here and write all day but I don’t think I would convince too many of you to reconsider your position based on reason and not emotions. Understandably, it is difficult to say, we sent our children to the wrong school. "

Time to stop burying your heads in the sand and start pushing the school to make the changes required. I doubt very much OFSTED would ever close it but it is certainly going to have to do something to show it is tackling its failures or new pupil numbers are going to dwindle rapidly.

It is far harder for HH parents to speak up to say they agree with the OFSTED findings than it is for parents to speak up in defence of HH. As they will be afraid that speaking up to say they agree with OFSTED's criticisms will have adverse repercussions for their children.
It is clear there are many present and ex HH parents who feel the OFSTED criticisms are valid and many who would say it has only infact scratched the surface. I do not see those comments on the petition that you quote Captain Nork. Are they deleting any comments that are not positive about the school?

The second quote came from a long post that was the most recent comment when I looked. If it is gone than I suppose they must be deleting negative posts.

There are only positive comments, so I guess they are deleting all others. Very balanced. Not.
A friend who works at a private school nearby says the phone's are ringing off the hooks from HH parents trying to get places for their children, so there are certainly many who want to get out.

It's still there actually - top of the most recent comments section www.ipetitions.com/petition/hill-house-international-school/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=button

There are some other negative post but they are in reply to other comments so not immediately apparent.

My eldest son went all the way through HH (4-13) and left 2 years ago - along with another 9 to go to St Paul's, and a smaller number to Westminster (many had offers for both). Some parents tutored, some didn't. We did about 1 hour every 3 weeks to help with my son's dyslexia. And no, he's not some sort of mathematical genius - just a very happy child who loved his time at HH.
Things haven't changed drastically since then - I have another child in the school who's also loving it.
When prospective parents ask me about HH, I always say that you either love it or you hate it. If you want lots of processes and form-filling, modern classrooms stuffed with computers, and parental involvement at every level, you won't like HH. Clearly this also doesn't go down well with Ofsted!
There are some things which could be improved, and the report has already been a catalyst for change. But to say that it's inadequate at every level is ludicrous, as are those on this forum who are accusing HH parents of child neglect!

No one is denying their leavers' results, but that is not the only way to judge a school. And there are many factors affecting the leavers' results such as the fact children who cannot keep up are offered no help to do so therefore leave hh before getting to the stage of applying for secondary school. And I do not see anyone accusing hh patents of child neglect! The leadership of HH have been found to be lacking in their safe keeping of the children though no one has implied the parents have been lacking.

I feel the parents would be better off putting pressure in the leadership to address the serious failings ofsted have highlighted rather than picking the report apart. Being told that the head is too busy to talk to parents until 6 weeks after the report coming out at the earliest is not really acceptable.

licious are your kids at the same Hill House in the report? It sounds as though you are talking about a different school.

What do you mean? I don't think the report describes a different school.

I didn't see any comment about child neglect referring to the parents. Must've missed that one. Parents are engaging with press now so some more positive articles coming out.

I think they are deleting negative comments after all licious - someone has posted this comment complaining:
"Have my comments been deleted? It is not right or balanced that the admin delete any comment that don't reflect their views. "