What happens when a school cant improve?

[GnomeDePlume]

DCs' school has gone back into Special Measures. It has been in and out of Special Measures like it is caught on the door handle.

Leadership, teaching, personal development, outcomes all assessed as inadequate.

In amongst the damning statements in the Ofsted report there was praise for the Principal. Unfortunately he has now left. Yet another in a long line of Heads. We have been associated with the school for 9 years. There have been at least 9 Heads in that time.

This isnt an inner city sink school. It is the only school in in a small midlands town.

So what does happen when a school just doesnt seem to be able to get itself out of the doldrums?

Has anyone any experience of this?

Fortunately our association with the school ends in two years as DD is now in 6th form (which was assessed as Good!).

Gnome I experienced the same with primaries, had DS at a RI one, decided to send DD to a "good" one, a year later DD's one became RI. I felt so frustrated, I knew it will take years till the change will come, years that could potentially affect my DCs education. Luckily they got back to good last year, same school if you ask me, I decided (maybe wrongly) that Ofsted will not affect my decision anymore, just the general feel of the school and the results they get will convince me.

It must be even harder to have your DC in a SM secondary school. All you can do I suspect is support the school as much as you can and support your DCs learning at home also.

Fourcornered thank you for explaining, it makes sense and therefore I understand now how a school with poor results may be good (or outstanding I suppose). To be fair it is a fair measure I did wonder if this school will ever have a chance to get the results coming through considering that most of the achieving pupils will go to the selective schools. Maybe now it will get a better chance. I'll keep an eye on it.

Thanks for this thread. I have a sick feeling we may be in a black hole and ds might end up a failing secondary. We also have an academy on the other side of town that doesn't look like its much better.

GnomeDePlume, I think you ask a really pertinent question as to how this school gets out from the special measures it is in , when it has been in that situation for so long.
In some respects you have hit the nail on the head when you say how many "super heads" you have had who do not last very long before they move on to pastures new. In effect they do something to make the school look good in the short term and that is the catalyst for them to move on.
I think that I would start with the Trust Board of this school and ask some questions as to whether they are really up to the job. Just the fact that nobody has managed to make things better permanently says that they are not up to the job. So I would put an Interim executive board (IEB) into the school. This will be usually no more than 5 people who have a much wider brief to get involved operationally and start to put in place the building blocks to improve the school. They also have to convince everybody else to butt out and let them get on with the job.
So having put in place some new governance for the school, I would start with improving student behaviour and motivation. You need to look at the poor behaviour of the students and modify it. I am guessing that at least one of the superheads will have had a zero tolerance policy, which might work in the short term but rarely works long term. Get a new behaviour policy that students and staff can work with and make sure that it is made to work all the time. This may well be partially by moving poorly behaved pupils into another pathway within the school for sustained periods of time.
The school does not need a superhead, it needs a good experienced head who is going to ensure that they stay at the school for 3 years minimum. They need to not only work with the years 10 and 11 to try and improve results but actually start in year 7 and ensure that everything is done to make those pupils make good or better progress, because they are the future of the schol.
Spending lots of money is not usually the answer but focused improvements such as redecorating the school do make a difference, though a focused approach to having the right resources is necessary.
The basics are in place and then you turn to improving the teaching and learning in the school. That needs a relentless approach to ensuring that teachers are teaching good lessons by moderation but also removing from the teaching staff as much non-teaching baggage as possible. So good non-teaching staff who will manage the 101 issues that parents and students bring up.
Expecting a turn around within 12 months is cuckoo-time, but do expect to see a turnaround with lots of "green shoots" within 2 years. But it does all come down to one thing and that is good management.

If you are interested, this is a link to the ofsted report:

reports.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspection-report/provider/ELS/139013

The principal referred to in the ofsted report has left. We now have our 4th principal since 2014.

I think the school need to find a good headteacher who can stay longer in this school. Our catchment school was really bad, it took the SLT nearly 10 years to get our school GCSE A8*-C rate from 30% to 50%, and it had a 65% this year, the best forever. The headteacher has been there since the reform started 10 years ago.

Gosh, Gnome, what a depressing read!

I think, reading the report, that good quality teaching needs to come first. It appears that too many supply teachers and permanent teachers have not applied the behaviour policy in a consistent way and that quality teaching and assessment is the main issue here. However, given that the outgoing Principal off-loaded underperforming staff, one wonders where the new shiny ones are going to come from? I am rather inclined to believe Sir Michael Wilshaw when he said that there were insufficient good teachers to go round and that observation also applies to senior leadership.

I think the judgement of inadequate on the Leadership is a tad harsh but the report took place at the end of last term and I would guess that the inspectors knew the Principal was leaving and therefore gave the judgement as inadequate as a very clear steer to the Academy chain to get a Principal that would stay for the longer term.

I do think all schools can improve, but not until they are able to secure good teachers and be well led so that teachers actually want to teach in the school. Also, there are two other schools 5-6 miles away in Wellingborough. I am not sure if Rushden children can get into them, but one wonders if the better teachers are in these schools? There are also independent schools in the area and they may well absorb the better teachers too. It is rarely possible to recruit the best middle leaders and teachers if leadership is a conveyor belt and there is a culture of under-perfomance. Good teachers must be supported but poor teachers not following the policies that everyone should adhere to is a big turn off to the good ones. It is demoralising when some teachers are not assessing students correctly, planning appropriate lessons and allowing poor work to be tolerated. It also indicates that SLT should be touring round the classrooms and monitoring lessons and work-books far more closely to ensure they know where the problems are and deal with them by mentoring, coaching, team teaching, intervening etc. The high use of supply teachers is a real red light for Ofsted as it is a big indicator of leadership problems and often poor teaching and lack of progress because of inconsistency.

Clearly the school needs to raise the aspirations of many of the pupils but too easily accepts poor work, bad behaviour, non attendance, poor language and poor teaching and instability of leadership without seeking to secure any improvement quickly. A new Principal with vision, drive, determination, skill, leadership qualities and staying power will be needed. There will, sadly, not be a huge array of applicants.

This is a joke - turn it into a grammar school! All the children who do not get in will have to be bussed elsewhere. That will turn it round!

That school has two others within 3 miles tat are both Good.
It is in a vicious circle, like my local school.
What is odd is that its not got lots of empty places (my local has 400 empty seats)

Actually Bojorojo you wont be surprised to read that is exactly what i would do. I would move all the current pupils by allocating them to better schools , thus allowing a fresh start for the struggling school.

The school is always going to be 'crap' and obviously cannot be changed , or improved why not create a 'great' school out of the ashes of a crap one !

I guess though posters would rather it remain a crap school, under any circumstances than allow the creation of a grammar school.

Incidentally Northamptonshire only gets 52% GCSE Average !

Not very good for a 'South Midlands ' totally Comprehensive area is it !

The Pure location of 80% of Northamptonshire means grammar schools are out of reach , so in theory its a 'totally' Comprehensive relatively affluent county 52%....

Not a great advert for Comprehensive education....

bojorojo I took the statement about the inadequacy of leadership applying to the whole structure from governorship down not being specific to the head. For the SLT within the school the constant churn of heads must be both disruptive in the sense of lack of clear direction. What it must also do is force more junior managers into making decisions on practice and policy which is beyond their experience and pay grade. This can never be good.

Ta1kinpeece, I think the reason for it not having lots of empty spaces is that you simply cant get your child into one of the other schools as they are in different towns. As you will know it isnt possible to successfully appeal against the allocation of a place in a school simply because the school is failing.

sandyholme I dont see how creating a grammar school would solve the problem. The problem is one of management.

My view is that what should be considered is creating a whole new school for the area. Ultimately merge the three schools in the area. This would create a school roll of 2200 for year's 7-11 and 320 for years 12-13.

Imagine the facilities such a school could have! A whole new school with new facilities and new management structure would be attractive to junior and senior staff.

For students the opportunities to study could be great. In a small school it is too easy to find that the ability level within a class is too broad. Bigger years allow for more subtle ability grouping.

Hey ho, that is my pipe dream!

Kent, the largest remaining grammar school area had 60.6% A*-C.

North Tyneside 61%, Gateshead 60.5%, Durham 62.2%, Darlington 61.5%, Sunderland 62.5%.

All have no grammar schools... and that's just the north east of England... I remain unconcvinced by your argument.

We might have to differ in our dream school there Gnome ... 2500 students is a monster school! I prefer schools to be no bigger than 1200... plus, amalgamations just never work - too much history. Even when they close all the schools and create new ones.

There was a school near us that for some reason just couldn't get itself out of special measures. It was made into an academy, then the sponsor pulled out and then it closed. It was very strange-it went from good to special measures in 4 years then stayed there.

sandyholme "Incidentally Northamptonshire only gets 52% GCSE Average ! Not very good for a 'South Midlands ' totally Comprehensive area is it !

It's interesting, when I read Gnome's description of the school, I would have put money on it being in that part of the world. I went to school not so far away, admittedly a very long time ago, but in what was a reasonably average school I think less than 5 of us out of a year of 180 went on to higher education. And my experience of the east Midlands is that on they whole those with get up and go . . . got up and went, as fast as they could. I'm not sure the education system is entirely to blame . . .

Sorry, my apologies if you are Rushden born and bred and love the east mids, Gnome

Gnome
Your idea of a meg school is probably the sanest answer to the issue I've ever seen.
If you have 420 kids per year group, that is three bands of 5 sets or two bands of 7 sets
which would allow real differentiation and targeting of resources.

Merging the SEN teams, the BTEC teams, the G&T teams
and then letting them really work with the kids under their remit
could do the trick

and remember that certain kids will come under all three teams
which is why I would never advocate selective education.

In my view the only solution would be to close the school and transfer students to the 'good' rated schools which are in the surrounding towns

They did that with a failing school in our city and bus-ed the kids to a "good" school in a town a few miles outside. A few years later, and that "good" school is now downgraded to "needs improvement". I know a few parents who sent their kids there on the grounds it was a "good" school, who've now moved them away to different schools due to major problems with the intake from the closed school. Sometimes it really isn't the school, but the pupils!

Agree.
My local school was created by merging one utterly dire with one mediocre.
THe combined school is now 1/4 the original size and still dire

Northamptonshire is a bit of an educational black hole. I think there are a number of things behind this: no major universities, no major cities, no major industries.

fourcorneredcircle why is your cut off 1200 students?

Ta1kinpeece I see so many advantages to a single large school. Opportunities for students through a broader range of staff and facilities. More opportunities for staff to specialise and develop.

Welllllll it's probably because I went to a small secondary (600) so it's my comfort zone.

I've worked in lots of schools and the only ones I really didn't like and it took me a long time to "fit" were the very large ones - I went in to teaching because I like young people so I'd rather build fewer, but better relationships. I also found that the larger the school the more "grey children" there were in the middle. Which is just really sad.

Bucks, a grammar school county, next door to Northamptonshire, has 68.4% A*-C Gcse results.

However Bucks and Northants are very different. A lot of Northamptonshire is rural and there are no commuter areas to speak of. I have not looked at the schools in this area is detail, but I would think the number of high achieving children is relatively low, in comparison to Bucks, and this is reflected in the results. That would make a grammar school unworkable in such a rural area. There appears to be a problem regarding recruitment of teachers into this area. It would not suit everyone and changing the schools is unlikely to help this.

In an Ofsted report, leadership is Governors and SLT. However there seemed to be an improvement with the governors and the Principal although clearly not quickly enough on the part of the governors so that would have added to the inadequate judgement no doubt.

Running a large school is probably cheaper but there is still the massive problem of teacher recruitment. If you cannot staff smaller schools, then one large school doesn't really help. Reading the report, the Principal had got rid of underperforming staff. As they could not be replaced, too many supply teachers were engaged and the remaining staff seemed to not be subject to effective performance management (another leadership failing). It is the quality of leadership, teaching and a change of ethos that is needed. That could be by closing this school and sending the children elsewhere. That is expensive.

DS goes to a big school, 1700 students and their school over performs. The school is situated on two sites opposite each other and they are divided in houses, the way they are organised it feels like they are split into 4 individual schools rather than one huge one but all taking advantage of the facilities.

So if it is properly organised it can work, but you would need somebody with that level of experience to run it.

Eton has 1300 pupils and the kids from there seem to do OK