Nightingale Primary School, Haringey - first Gove forced academy

[Rosebud05]

Nightingale Primary School, Haringey is the first victim of the powers that Gove strengthened in the Nov '11 Education Act. They received an e-mail on Tuesday informing them that their governing body was sacked from immediate effect and replaced with an interim executive board.

antiacademies.org.uk/2012/02/press-statement-by-former-nightingale-school-governors-sacked-by-gove/

To pre-empt responses about 'schools which have been under performing for years', the facts of the situation are that Nightingale has never been below the floor targets, and was put into an Ofsted category of 'notice to improve' for the first time last October. The Governors were taking robust steps to improve the school - new Interim Head, robust school improvement plan - and asked the DfE to let them consult and to see how the Ofsted monitoring visit due in a few weeks went before taking action.

The DfE didn't respond to this letter, but instead sacked the governing body and issued an Academy Order.

Does anyone still believe that Gove's academy agenda is a) non-apolitical b) about improving standards?

The ofsted report from oct is pretty damning.

Both the govs and the school leadership received a 4.

Doesn't seem like they are the right people to turn the school around.

If it was my childs school I'd be very pleased they were sacked.

But then I don't care about politics at all. I pretty much only care about my childrens education.

How do you know the improvement plan that was agreed was 'robust'? Who said it was 'robust'?

Do you know what the improvement plan was?

Is it not confidential?

My point is that Ofsted is being used politically, indigo.

The school had replaced the head - Ofsted didn't find the new head 'inadequate' as the DfE wouldn't give the school a few weeks for an inspection to be made.

The parents at Nightingale are also concerned about their children's education. Which is why they don't want their school handed over to some possibly for profit making chain with no experience at primary school and - as most of them have - a patchy history at secondary.

Compare for a moment with the Nightingale School in Eastleigh on the same page as the DfE tables. Eastleigh below floor target, worse progression, far from great CVA yet Ofsted say a 'good' school.

Sounds like OFSTED need to get back to that other Nightingale sharpish then.

It's insane isn't it? I thought this government was meant to be all about choice and local decisions yet it seems hell bent on foisting academy status on schools even when parents, teachers and the whole community are against it. So the community's choice to not turn all their schools into academies doesn't matter .

You still haven't answered who said the school improvement plan was robust - or why we should believe them.

You are the one who are concerned about politics. If you hate academies (which you do) you have to hate them regardless of whether they're a labour or Tory initiative.

Leave politics out of your argument. It's not relevant. The only thing that's relevant is the school.

You cant possibly speak for all of the patents of nightingale primary school, and it's improbable that they all hold the same view.

Just seems to me like you care about politics more than education - and that you're scared of change.

It is absolutely not possible for anyone to predict the future. Noone can know whether converting will be good or bad - or indeed which groups of people the conversion will be good for and which groups of people the conversion will be bad for.

If you spent your energy on trying to improve all schools or your local school, rather than spendingyour energy debating polotics I'd have more respect for you.

You could be campaigning against something that will be a very positive move.

Of course it's political. You don't really think Gove believes in parent choice, do you?

Next to fall will likely be Downhills - it was improving but Gove took arim and the head, in the crosshairs of the Academy juggernaut, just gave up and resigned. It's a lost cause now.

And yes, I would have sent my DG there - under the old head. Lord knows what April will bring.

Haringey didn't even have enough school places for all its children last year. Gove really isn't helping.

You are also forgetting that it is never up to parents, staff or community whether a school becomes an academy or not.

They are not privy to enough information to even have an informed opinion.

Normally (ie non forced conversions) it is solely the governors decision.

In this case the governors aren't good enough to be able to make that decision and the govt has made it for them.

What the parents think is frankly irrelevant. They don't know the details of the school budget, or how it's spent, or the HTs performance management review, or what services the LEA provides, or how good the LEA is or any of the decision making criteria.

Of course it's political. - yes but I don't understand the relevance of it being political. I don't see why it matters.

You sound cross, indigo. You're not upset that I've posted this, are you?

Um, I don't remember saying that I hated academies - I'm just not at all convinced that they're a route to school improvement.

I do however despite Gove's forced primary academy programme. The governing body at this school hadn't had a chance to consult with stake holders eg parents, the local community. There is no evidence that sponsored academies are a route to school improvement - this has never been done before at primary level.

The DfE try to justify their academy programme by citing Prof Machin's research done at the LSE last year which indicated some tentative success for the sponsored academies set up under the last Labour government. He said that it is too early to predict long-term success. Prof Machin clarified a few weeks ago that these research findings cannot be extrapolated to the academies set up by the Coalition and not to primary academies.

So, as whole programme of forced primary academies with absolutely no evidence base. I'm not surprised that parents don't want their children's education to be used as a political experiment.

The School Improvement Plan had been approved by Ofsted and the LA, by the way.

It's not possible to leave politics out of education - I actually find it stunning that anyone can think it is.

I hope they do push through changes at Downhills. It's high time the children there could expect the same results as this who go to Cuckoo Hall. The two schools have similar social indicators, and D has 70% ESL, CH 60%. But only 61% of D pupils reach the national target levels in SATS, compared to 100% at CH.

Cuckoo Hall became outstanding as a community school, edith, then converted to an academy.

Your argument makes no sense.

custard, the governors hadn't had two years to address anything.

They were put on a 'notice to improve' in October '11 and Ofsted were due back in a few weeks for a monitoring visit. The governors asked the DfE to wait until that visit had happened.

The leadership of the school had been addressed - see my first post.

It doesn't follow that it needs to be forced to become a sponsored academy.

The school was put on to a 'notice to improve' in October and given a year to do that with a monitoring visit halfway. What would be a reason not to let at least that first monitoring visit occur?

Last June, Gove said that he was going to force the '200 most under performing schools' to convert to sponsored academy status. These were schools that had been below the floor target for the last 5 years. Clearly, a quick look at the performance tables shows that this is not one of those schools.

So why is it be forced to convert now, just a few weeks before Ofsted are back?

It does make sense. It demonstrates abundantly clearly what schools with this profile of population can and should be achieving.

If a school cannot meet this level of achievement under its current management (and Downhills been trying since 2009), then it's time to call draw a line under the current management before more years of children get less than what has been shown possible.

Edith do you know the annual turnover at these two schools? It's a key factor in comparing "population profile" and I can't seem to find it.

As for Cuckoo Hill: 'Patricia Sowter, its headteacher, says her main motivation for turning becoming an academy is the extra money the school will receive.'

'Sowter says the extra sum could amount to as much as £200,000 a year. A third of the pupils at her school have special needs and she would like to use some of it to help them. "We'd like to spend it on things like speech therapy," she says. "The resources for this are very scarce, and some of our children are at the back of the queue.'

If politicians (I'm looking at Gove) really cared about the pupils not the politics, he'd give all schools the resources they need.

Forced Academy status - without knowing the sponsor, without parental involvement - is simply a recipe for private sector profits.

If these profit-making sponsors were so good, they'd easily make their profits in the private education sector.

I think that Rosbud05, you are missing something here. Look back at the Ofsted inspection of Nov 10 and you will see the writing on the wall. Poor leadership in both staff and governors. Come October 2011, same issues.
What has changed is a much more forceful attitude by the DfE and the LA to what is consistent failure. Before they would probably have just allowed the school to bumble along being very mediocre. Now action is being taken.
It is no use saying that things are getting better, previous history says that any improvement is transitory and to be blunt the GB had their chance after the Nov 10 report and failed to act on it. Now it may well be that the fault is one of being led up the garden path by the head saying all will be OK in the future, but they were not carrying out their monitoring role to make sure things were improving. So probably this is the right decision. It is what would have happened before, an IEB, followed by changes in the school staff and after improvement reintroduction of a new GB. The only difference now is that it will be an academy rather than a community school.
Having said that I strongly suspect in the 200 marked for academisation that there are a good few schools that actually are making all the right moves and should not be being forced down this route.

edith, no it doesn't make sense. Cuckoo Hall's success has nothing whatsoever to do with being an academy - it was successful as a community school. It is not logical to say that because CH was successful as a community school, Downhills should become an academy.

admission, Nightingale hasn't been 'consistently failing' whatever criteria you use. It's never been below the floor target, even in Gove's 5 year retrospective analysis which was supposed to be the way in which his first 200 forced academies were identified. It went into an Ofsted category for the first time 5 months ago. There are many, many schools across the country that do and have been doing worse that are not being forced into becoming sponsored academies. It's obviously not in the '200 worst performing', so why is it being forced?

This is what you're missing, admission - why is this school being forced when it clearly isn't one of these 200 schools that have been below the floor target for at least 5 years.

Did you hear Radio 4 'The Report' 16/2/12?

Why does CH have to become an academy to buy in speech therapy?- because the LEA are not doing their job and providing enough speech therapy to schools.

Academies aren't getting more money from the govt than maintained schools - they just don't have to give some of their budget to the LEA.

The LEA doesn't prioritise SEN as highly as CH. CH is better than the majority of schools.......

No child should leave primary school unable to read. I have no sympathy for any school leadership that fails a significant proportion of it's students.

None at all.

Rosebud: I think you're trying to read to much into my posts. I didn't mention type of management of CH. I was using it as an example of the level of achievement that is realistic in that area and with similar demographics.

It makes total sense to show that much higher standards can be achieved than those currently at D.

And it makes total sense to say that D needs improvement, and the current management approach has not provided the required standards.

But what doesn't make total sense is that the solution to any difficulties in the school is to be forced to convert to a sponsored academy, given that many academies also require improvement and have inadequate management.

So that'll be the third of secondary academies that are below the 'floor target' and the quarter whose results are declining, then, indigo?