Holland Park School

[Oilyvoir]

www.theguardian.com/education/2021/aug/04/allegations-of-toxic-working-environment-at-top-london-school-holland-park

Interesting article if you are in the RBKC area.

Hello @Taxwolf, our nephew was at Burlington Danes and moved to Twyford later on. I haven't heard about the teachers but I did hear all sort of naughty stuff the kids do. Church schools like Twyford generally provide discipline and structure from a religious perspective and we would have preferred that. Unfortunately, we don't qualify for a place. I have also seen many state secondary schools near us that have police guarding the entrance. I wonder what kind of circumstances demand such drastic measures and how their teachers handle the students.

One of my colleagues is ex staff there and contributed to the report.

I can’t believe there are parents here who think this is a good school and as long as discipline is excellent and results outstanding that means it’s a good school.

The abuse they were able to get away with is insane.
They stole staff questionnaires for ofsted which were critical.
They ignored allegations of sexual abuse
They continued to put a girl in a classroom with her abuser and deliberately orchestrated an environment where the girls was ostracised by her peers.
They held staff meeting using a seating plan of preference.
They shamed students and staff on plasma screens across the school with what they deemed their failures.
They called up new schools that teachers left them for and gave bad references.
They threatened teachers who wanted to leave.
They refused to reintegrate students who had time off for mental health including being hospitalised.
They refused to provide work for students who were at home due to this.

I mean the list goes on and on and on. 21 years he was head there and he collected a group of SLT as insane as he was and created the most toxic school culture I’ve ever heard of.

But I guess it’s ok because the results are amazing.

@Faffandahalf, we didn't go to HPS simply because of the results but because my child is happy there. So am I supposed to deny my child of her feeling that she is learning well and happy and that her teachers are nice but instead tell her that it is not what she sees and it's all bad? What will you believe, your child or what the media said? It would be poisonous, isn't it? The school has gone through many rounds of safeguarding and reviews. The events that you have mentioned are definitely Not the current situation.

This will be my last post on this thread because it has way exceeded my self-set quota for a thread. My aim is not to condemn anyone, nor to deny anyone of what they have experienced and nor to judge, but to share what we have experienced. Wishing everyone a good weekend and all the best to parents looking for a secondary school.

They are the current situation. Of course they are. He’s only just stepped down

You just didn’t know about it because you were presented with a facade and the reality is a brutal and psychologically damaging environment for both students and staff.

Also the many ‘rounds of safeguarding and reviews’ are tainted by allegations of stealing staff questionnaires for Ofsted so again it’s just all one big lie. 🤷🏽‍♀️

@Whyisitallsostressful

I am interested in Burlington Danes because it’s the school I went to myself back in the 70s when it was a selective girls grammar school!

I think that comprehensive school results have a direct correlation with the social mix of the intake. I don’t think in those schools it has much to do with HP’s discipline or
expectations or teaching being better.

BDA has 2 of the poorest housing estates in the area very local to it. As I said upthread, I believe Holland Park changed its admission criteria ( distance rather than attending an RBKC primary then distance ) to exclude the poorer areas of North Ken.

@Taxwolf
That’s the purpose of the Progress 8 score though: to reflect the level of improvement each school makes with the intake that they receive. Therefore it’s not just about final results, but the ‘value add’ that the school makes. HP scores significantly better by this measure also.

Like BDA, the HP catchment covers many large housing estates. I looked up the pupil premium figures for both schools - they are more or less the same with both around the 30% mark, (HPs is actually slightly higher) so HP by no means has a purely middle-class intake.

Regarding your point about admissions criteria, I believe that this change was because of a government directive from 2014, with the introduction of the Schools Admission Code. I think there are very very few schools in London that now work on a feeder school model. HP is in line with all the other secondary schools in the borough, where distance is one of the key criteria, which surely is how it should be? A state comprehensive should serve the local community, which makes distance the fairest model to implement. I think that perhaps as the school has become more successful, (meant in the literal sense of exam results - I know in other areas you would disagree), parents that might have looked at other options before are now opting in and so the distances are getting smaller.

For context, as some have questioned my intentions on this thread, I was a teacher at Holland Park school. Those recordings may be isolated events but the behaviour demonstrated in the clips are not (in my experience) unusual. I would go as far as to say that the kind of shouting in those clips was normalised at holland park when I taught there a decade ago.

@Whyisitallsostressful

No. They are completely different demographics. Around half the pupils at BDA are eligible for free school meals and a third have English as a second language. HP is no where near those figures.

Of other schools in the borough, 4 select on faith as a major criteria and 1 selects on the basis of a catchment area which is within the borough boundaries. All the schools have distance as a criteria as does HP, but HP used to prioritise children who attended a RBKC primary school. This change appeared to me to be social engineering, as well as a fuck off to RBKC. However the distances are now so tight, that even children who could walk to school quite easily don’t get in.

@Taxwolf I agree that demographic intake is a big deciding factor when it comes to results outcome; however as I said above, the Progress 8 (value add) score shows that HP makes a greater differential to learning outcomes regardless of exam grades.

Distance has to be a fairer entrance criteria than feeder schools? Imagine a scenario where children living several km from the school, but happened to have gone to a feeder got places, but families moving into the area couldn’t get into a school on their doorstep?

I feel like we’ve slightly gone down a rabbit hole, but possibly it’s just another area we have differing opinions.

I’m genuinely sorry that you daughter had a tough time at the school and it’s great that she’s found her way through that to something she loves. As I’ve said, my children love HP and so I can only hope that in the last 7 years there have been enough changes that the school we both feel we have experience of is very different.

It’s very easy to massage Progress 8 figures if you make life intolerable for those with SEN or who encounter mental health or other issues & they leave.

So... I have now spoken to my daughter's friend (and her mother) who is currently at Holland Park and they are not at all happy with the school. They say some teachers SCREAM at kids (and kids are scared of them) and it's not well-organised

@Faffandahalf

One of my colleagues is ex staff there and contributed to the report.

I can’t believe there are parents here who think this is a good school and as long as discipline is excellent and results outstanding that means it’s a good school.

The abuse they were able to get away with is insane.
They stole staff questionnaires for ofsted which were critical.
They ignored allegations of sexual abuse
They continued to put a girl in a classroom with her abuser and deliberately orchestrated an environment where the girls was ostracised by her peers.
They held staff meeting using a seating plan of preference.
They shamed students and staff on plasma screens across the school with what they deemed their failures.
They called up new schools that teachers left them for and gave bad references.
They threatened teachers who wanted to leave.
They refused to reintegrate students who had time off for mental health including being hospitalised.
They refused to provide work for students who were at home due to this.

I mean the list goes on and on and on. 21 years he was head there and he collected a group of SLT as insane as he was and created the most toxic school culture I’ve ever heard of.

But I guess it’s ok because the results are amazing.

I think what a lot of people don't understand is that the (mostly very young) teachers at HPS were bullied by the leadership team almost as much as the children were. My DC has told me of a young teacher sitting at her desk during the class, just silently crying her way through the class. The kids didn't know what to do so pretended it wasn't happening. So many teachers who went through Holland Park are now no longer teaching at all, and I don't blame them.

My own DC is only now starting to emerge out of the shadow of that school - it's done lasting damage that will take a long time to repair. The head has said he will retire. I honestly think he should be prosecuted, along with his thug sidekicks in the leadership team.

@Doorkeeper as a former newly qualified teacher at Holland Park School I couldn’t agree more. I didn’t see out my NQT year (because I had another career to fall back on).
I feel for your daughter and all her contemporaries. I know exactly what sort of environment the students and staff their had to endure on a daily basis.
Sadly if the school and their leadership are ‘taken down’ it will raise questions about OFSTED that no one has the drive to answer.

heidiwine you have all my sympathies, too.

I have been trying to raise just how awful HP is for years, and have been treated as if its my own DC - who would rather break a leg than break a rule - who was the problem. It has been so validating that this has all come out.