Is it possible to turn an underachieving school around from the outside?

[onesandwichshort]

DD is in reception and I'm increasingly realising that her school, although very kindly and well-meaning is educationally under-achieving in quite a big way. This isn't just my opinion, several other of the parents in her class feel the same, and one of them is a primary teacher in another LEA, so knows what she's talking about.

We are all now wondering what to do next. As far as I can see there are two options, to go and see the various parent governors and talk to them about our concerns, and/or to go to the head and say that we have a problem. I'm particularly unsure about the latter course though as I think the head (who has high-end qualifications in indecisiveness and lack of vision) has very much set the tone throughout the school. And I can't say that doing either of these will result in a quick change.

Or do we accept that most schools are like this and supplement furiously outside? Or move? But there isn't an obvious good local alternative.

For the record, the school is satisfactory with some good features. When we went round they made much of their creative curriculum and inclusiveness, but they are much better at talking than action.

Anti bullying policies are mendatory. And behaviour policy. You can ask for the policies with the admin team, it's not very hard to get hold of.

As with changing the books many schools have that issue.

What work do you do with your child with regards to reading at home? Personally I would not move my child if the issues you describe would be present, I would try to solve them. As far as I can see with my friends, no school is perfect. Even with friends who are sending their children to very expensive fee paying schools.

Ask to see the policies. On Monday morning. The reaction of the office staff will tell you a lot.

You say in your op that the school is "educationally under achieving in quite a big way" - what are you basing that on?

As for your dd's reading- she doesn't actually need extra tuition in Reception- she just needs to read and be read to (grandmother and eggs emoticon). However, the school should deliver what they say they area going to deliver. Just don't worry about your specific child if they don't.

Just a word of caution- don't take the teacher from another authority's word as gospel. Teachers can be ....challenging... parents at their children's schools.

I realise that this is a difficult thread, and that the problems are mostly of my own making because I don't want to put actual details down on here. The bullying policy was an example; it's not in real life the problem we have. But I will go into school next week and chase up the changes we have been promised.

As far as the reading thing goes, DD is a bit of a bookworm (slight understatement) and reads chapter books silently to herself, we also read to her, she reads school books to us. Her problems are a bit different, and I don't want to generalise from them except to say that we keep being promised provision and then it doesn't turn up. But other parents feel that their children are ready to learn a lot more than is presented to them and are frustrated. So that's one way I think they are under-achieving (and that was mentioned in their Ofsted). The other is the utter lack of action on any behaviour problem, even when it's been acknowledged by them

But although I am making this difficult for myself, I am really grateful for all your responses, it's really helping me to think this through and and also to work out what realistic expectations of the situation are.

Why don't you wqnt to ask for the behaviour and bullying policies? I think that would be a really good way of finding out whether they have them, how up to date they are and how easy to find they are. You have a right to do this as a parent. Spring the request on them- 9.00 the first day of term.

I am going to do that, and also ask for the KS1 results as well.

Work with the school - offer to go in and help. This would enable you to better understand what is actually happening in the classroom.

If you read hundreds of threads on here you will find that many, many parents feel that their schools are not meeting the needs of more able learners. In my experience, extension through other activities is a better answer than constant 'upwards' extension.

I have been 'fighting this battle' for 7 years and am now actively involved in a school that is now recognised to be failing in a number of areas. My oldest DC (year 6) will achieve what I would expect at the end of KS2, but this has been with a lot of support from myself, at the schools request, but has involved close partnership with the school throughout the 7 years.

As for the school, much has already been said about how important the attitude of the staff is, and I think this is where I am now reaching my sticking point. A school can only improve if the staff, parents and community are all on board. This struggle has now made me ill and I'm not sure I'll have a school to fight for anymore at the end of this academic year.

However, do I wish I'd moved my children? No, I don't. But I'm expecting to join the ranks of the home-eds in the not too far distant future!

Hi onesandwichshort:

Well first of all you aren't alone. This could be my DD's school and I suspect many others probably have had similar experiences.

Working to the minimum is often an 'institutional' culture and therefore will be very hard to change in any way as the outsider.

I tried for 3 years to work with some incredibly difficult personalities at my DDs school raising funds, making suggestions, e-mailing information/ websites and generally asking questions about anything that concerned me. The result was that I was labelled as difficult and relations with school are unpleasant to say the least. They see me as a PITA and won't hear that they haven't held up their end of the bargain - sorry teachers but telling a parent in March of Y2 (Teacher, SENCo & HEAD) that a child not being able to take 1 from 10 is perfectly normal and 'they're on track' is utter rubbish. Then refusing to recommend workbooks/ websites for practice/ etc... is simply a dereliction of duty. (I also add that we reported our case regarding Maths to OFSTED and OFSTED have required the school to improve maths provision.)

Our solutions over our situation at our school.

1. Move home & then school. Still hoping to sell but no luck so far.

2. Support learning at home - this is at least gradually improving DDs' attainment.

Since your school is only for a few years (you said just to Y4) - I would suggest that unless you're up for battle (and trust me it will be) if you want an easier life just do what you can at home.

What I will say is that eventually OFSTED will send a letter letting the school know when to expect an inspection - this will be posted on the OFSTED website. When that appears you know you have roughly a year before the next inspection. That's the time (either individually or as a group) to start asking questions or asking for improvements in writing. The school will be obliged to deal with this. One thing OFSTED will be investigating is whether governors are holding the school to account and are accessible to parents. If the governors are not directly approachable or seeking opinion from parents - complain in writing. This will be particularly damning come inspection.

Please do bear in mind that teachers can be very vindictive (apologies to more professional teachers out there). So we take a great deal of care and time to phrase our complaints postively and to be sure we are fully aware of policy documents (both school & DfE - which are useful to quote back to school). Our solution has been to raise a criticism and then to provide possible suggestions about how the problem might be resolved. We found it very useful to indicate what other local schools were doing in relation to the issue we raised.

Thanks both of you, these are just the kind of experiences that I was after. And it seems that the answer to my original question is no, it's just not possible - but that is really helpful to know as I don't want to waste a lot of time and emotional effort on a futile task.

I have been volunteering a bit at the school and, tbh, it's that which has shown me exactly how poor the decision making and initiative is. I'm not a natural teacher of small children (some understatement) but I will try and see if I can do some volunteer admin for them. Or just change books.

My plans for the moment are:
a) Talk to one of the parent governors about my concern (and I know that other parents are approaching other governors). This at least avoids direct confrontation for now while we also...
b) chase up the school for improvements on the specific things which are impacting on DD right now
c) Wait for another half term to see what changes and then start looking at alternatives if it's not enough.

PastSellByDate - I completely hear what you are saying about the approach we need to take and will heed your advice!

KS2L6 - I completely agree with you about lateral extension, but, again this is one of the things that school has promised but failed to deliver at all. Right now I will settle for anything at all which actually stretches DD and forces her to think within school. I think the difficulty is that lateral extension takes up much more teacher/TA time than just sending them up a class or two for some activities. But we are thinking about asking to flexi-school as one solution so that we can provide it ourselves.

OneSandwichShort - I became a governor to try and help my old terrible school. Even that didn't help. I was still absolutely powerless.

You are right, it's absolutely futile.

Whether or not you decide to "take on" a school and fight for change depends on many factors.

You first need to take a decision as to the likelihood of achieving change in time for your child to benefit. Obviously if you have lots of children and they are all going to be going to the same school you might feel that the fight is worth fighting for them. You also need to take a decision as to how much time you are going to devote to fighting for the cause vs. how much time you are going to spend supplementing your child's education outside school. Obviously, fighting the cause often uncovers very valuable data about the gaps in a school's provision, which enables you to target your efforts at supplementation better.

You can also just devote your energies to supplementing outside school (sharing what you do with other like-minded parents). This is not necessarily a bad course of action - children do benefit hugely from a lot of one-on-one attention.

If a viable alternative school exists, I would recommend that you go down that route first and foremost.

Good luck.

I actually do think change is possible from the outside - I have achieved a very considerable change of opinion in our school by dint of much lobbying (I had someone who felt as strongly as me to open doors, while I had the skills and knowledge with which to lobby). But do not underestimate the time you will spend - it has taken me four years to get this change! In the mean while, I have supplemented my DD's education very considerably and the investment in both time and money has been quite significant.

OP, I have been in your situation too. I tried and tried to encourage improvement but to no avail. Helping out in the school just made things worse because I got to see first hand evidence of failures which I hadn't even known existed.

There were good teachers, average teachers and a terrible teacher at my DCs school but what really mattered was the bad HT. It became clear that she would say the right things but she had no intention of actually improving the things that weren't right.

Gradually I realized the essential truth in the old proverb that "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink".

she had a number of well-used defenses, all of which I learned later were complete lies.

1. I was the first ever parent to have raised this specific concern.
2. The school needed to do the best for all the children as a whole, not any individual. (When I helped out in school and spoke to other parents, I realized that it failed the brightest, least able and those in the middle. So, all types...)
3. The matter needed further investigation. (Then she'd go away and do nothing until six weeks later when I'd get a bland, unspecific letter saying all had been resolved).
4. Black was white i.e. KS1 & 2 results were good and they were especially proud of their improving CVA score (even though the school languishes in the bottom decile for the county.)

There are only two solutions that i can see:-

1. arrange for your child to be educated elsewhere (home, tutors or new school)
2. Hope the head retires/ gets pushed out - but even then it will likely take a few years for your daughter to feel the improvements and by then you'll be looking for remedies to repair the damage that has been done.

Good luck.

PS I would say though that it is surprising that you have been able to identify so much so quickly. What were you expecting the reception year to be like?

If your head is a man, you can appeal to his ego - in all probability he will be more interested in his career and whether his school looks good versus others than an appeal to his conscience about the educational provision for pupils. But no matter - you just need to present the one, major item for change that he will buy into as a win-win for him (personally).

Never, ever go to see a head with a laundry list of anecdotal things wrong with the school.

More very useful posts, thank you.

Bonsoir - the laundry list advice is particularly good, as I think it's what we were in danger of doing. We will concentrate on specifics for now.

Meredeux, that sounds like a nightmare, and the HT like a sociopath. Did you leave in the end? And is she still in place?

You are all right about supplementation, which we are doing. One of the reasons I am particularly hacked off is that I have just had a 'learning journey' report in which DD is doing stuff way under what she does at home. I am also thinking about setting up an extra-curricular club doing interesting things at the weekend. But I do rather resent the fact that I am doing 80% of the educating right now.

As for what I was expecting Reception year to be like, I did not have the foggiest (and I knew it would be a bit tricky with DD already reading). But in the case of her extra work, and another problem we have had, they keep promising loads and delivering nothing, so it actually hasn't been too hard to work out that they are a bit rubbish. Plus they forgot DD's birthday, so she came home in tears. I've also been involved with the PTA which has exposed me to some fantastic lack of decisiveness over some (small) things. All of which adds up to a picture.

Sooo, off to see what other schools have places then.

You need to think about what all the anecdotal evidence is telling you - is there one major issue that a lot of small, repetitive problems are emanating from? In our case it was the lack of a proper curriculum for English, with external benchmarking of standards. I identified an easy, cheap way of implementing a proper curriculum (perhaps not the gold standard of all curricula, but plenty good enough to be going on with) and managed to wangle the opportunity to have a conversation with the decision maker in which I made him understand he would lose face in his marketplace if he didn't implement.

Lots of small issues are being dealt with as a result of focusing on one big one.

But you MUST find out what the KS1 results are like before you have any sort of meeting. It would be deeply embarrassing if you went in all guns blazing talking about underachievement only to find out thwt every child gets a level 3 at KS1.

And don't forget that there is a whole lot more to Reception than academic achievement. And did you remind the teacher that it was dd's birthday?

My school is off the potential list as I never remember anyone's birthday

does the school usually do something special on a child's birthday?

What I don't understand is that we are discussing a child who is in Reception. As far as I know, Reception has strong play-based learning, encouraging children to socialise, enjoy being at school, play indoors and outdoors, get to understand how school works and how routines work, and learn through play. Some schools will start from Reception with a strong focus on learning letter sounds, others will start in the winter term, others will start in the spring term. Some parents in my son's class are dissapointed that the children are learning to read so late in the year, but I am very, very happy because my son had poor social skills before he started school and he has made so, so much progress in making friends, playing with others, being able to participate, even get up and talk in front of the class about something special to him. He has a speech dissorder (and although is is very good at reading and writing, he could do both before starting school) his speech is severely delayed. Reception is there to help children step into the world of school, and personally I much prefer a play-based approach to learning, which as far as I can tell is what the curriculum is based on anyway.

onesandwichshort - I found places at a new school starting last September (and I think shortened my life expectancy by around 5 years with all the stress of searching!).

I'm now pathetically grateful when I see the new school do basic things such differentiated learning targets and I nearly cried at parent's night recently when i realised how my oldest is thriving!

I would agree with others here though who allude to the fact that Reception doesn't really have much formal learning expectations. After all some children are only weeks past their fourth birthday when they start and a lot of the first term is spent just settling everyone into school life. Maybe you should ask some of the parents of children in the upper years for their views before you make any final conclusions about the school?

Isn't it normal for a teacher to at least get the rest of the class to sing "Happy Birthday" to a young child?

Sorry I should have added - there was a recent Ofsted at my children's old school. It lost all of its "good" features. It is now just "satisfactory". Subsequently, it was announced that the head had decided to retire ....

Even if the new head is very good though, its still going to take another year or two to sort out the problems. So my eldest would have moved on to secondary by the time any improvements worked through whilst I my youngest might have only had a year or so free of the outgoing head's legacy.

So if you are certain that the school is not right for your child, then move because before you know it, you'll be contemplating secondary school!

Yes, they sung happy birthday to every other child who'd had a birthday before, that's what upset DD.

Fear not seeker, I am going to get the KS1 results. But having seen what people have said on this thread I am only going to speak to them about DD's issues (i.e. the gap between what we have been promised and what has materialised), am not going even try to change anything else about the school.

BlueberryPancake. I agree completely, that was what I signed up for when DD started school. Unfortunately, she doesn't fit into that system very well. School agree, and keep promising her extra provision, which then rarely turns up.

At risk of identifying myself, our other big problem is playtime. 120 Reception and year 1 chidren in a tarmac playground with nothing else on offer and inadequate supervision, when every other school in the area has some kind of buddy bench/olay leaders/quiet area/clubs. It is rough and miserable; DD hates it, at least 10 other parents in Reception have complained, there is bullying from older children when the younger ones go to the loo. We have been promised all sorts of things, but as yet nothing has changed. Except, after DD cried before school again about playtime and told me she was hiding under the bench to get away from other children, I spoke to the TA. There is now a box of books in the playground. That is it. It is now a term since we first raised the issue. By the time it is fixed, if they do, DD will have done most of her Reception year, and that stinks. Especially as it's something that other schools do as a matter of course.

That will be play leaders; nothing to do with moisturiser