To reject or not to reject? The dilemma of an Inadequate secondary school!

[REP1234]

Apologies in advance as I am sure this question will have been asked before but I am new to the forum and can't find the info! My son has received an offer of a secondary school that wasn't on his list of preferences and was deemed by Ofsted to be Inadequate in 2017. I intend to appeal but don't know what I should do about the place on offer. The council states that accepting the offer will not prejudice any appeal but I worry that if I have accepted an school place there is less pressure to allow the appeal?
If I can push my luck with a follow on question smile the previously inadequate school has a new head teacher and I have heard that he is turning things around but without an up to date Ofsted report or any other evidence of this (no exam results due to covid) I feel like I am being asked to take a gamble on my son's education - is Ofsted the only way of measuring a school's performance? Sorry for the long post - this is all new to me and its very stressful!

Definitely accept. Make sure you are on thr waiting lists for schools you were not successful in securing a place at. And make decisions re appeal if you have the grounds to do so. Not accepting an offered place puts you in a worse position because you have chosen to place yourself outside the system. And you will not be looked after.

Always accept the offered school, if you don't and your appeal fails then the local authority may leave you high and dry as they have discharged their duty.

Have you been able to visit the offered school? If not then arrange to do so, and see how it feels. Ofsted is a very narrow way to measure a school's performance in my opinion and the atmosphere of a school is more important.
I liked when we looked around secondary schools when the head teacher knew every child's name, it meant that they saw the children as individuals and spent enough time in amongst the children to get to know them.

Yes accept it. Counter to your belief, rejecting the place can make it look like you're trying to force the appeal panel's hand which would be getting off on the wrong foot.

Never reject the offer. The LA has fulfilled it's duty to offer a school place. If you reject it and your appeal fails, they are under no obligation to offer you another one, in that school or any other.

Do remember when planning your appeal, that you see appealing for that school, not against the one you have been offered.

Unless you think there has been a mistake in applying the entrance criteria, you will be appealing on the basis of 'balance of prejudice' ie the prejudice (detriment) to your DS from not attending the school outweighs the prejudice to the school,and its other pupils in going over numbers. What is it about the appealed for school/s that particularly and specifically benefit DS?

Also we had an inadequate school locally and it was turned around by a new head. It's oversubscribed and people move within our town to get into it.

Do not reject the place under any circumstances. If you reject the place the council does not have to do anything more as they have offered your son a place. Accepting that place does not in any way prejudice an appeal. You will also remain on waiting lists for the other schools - check how many schools your council allow you to be on the wait list for and make sure you are on those. Remember your appeal is for a school, not against the one you've been allocated so you need to find good reasons for appealing for other schools. Not liking the offered school because of Ofsted isn't sufficient reason.

If a school was deemed Inadequate in 2017 there must have been further inspections. When ds's school went from Good to Requires Improvement in 2015, Ofsted were in every year and parents sent Monitoring Visit Reports telling us of progress until the school went back to Good with Outstanding Features in 2020. Are there no Monitoring Reports on the Ofsted website?

Definitely go to look at the school. I think an unsatisfactory Ofsted often attracts a seismic change, new staff and extra resources. If there's a new dynamic head in place then I wouldn't write the school off.

Remember you would be equally taking a gamble on a school that had a better Ofsted rating from 5 years ago.
I would hope in 5 years there had been improvement - but you can ask specific questions to find out what.

@REP1234, don't under-estimate the impact a really good HT and SLT can have on a school!

DD2 went to a school which was failing a couple of years before she went there but a new HT turned it around completely. DD ended up with good GCSEs and A levels and now has a first-class MSc from a world-leading university. 10 years on and these days the school is over-subscribed, and it's all down to the HT and her SLT.

We have a local school that was inadequate 6 years ago (and realistically for a decade or more before that) and no one from the "middle class" primary schools put it as a choice. People literally remortgaged to send their children to an independent school.
Now it's the most popular school from those very same primaries. Results are not yet reflecting the turn-around (it's too soon) but the school is a completely different environment thanks to the new head and her SLT.

is Ofsted the only way of measuring a school's performance?

Ofsted is a terrible way to measure school performance and an Ofsted from 5 years ago means very, very little.

What were their results 2 years ago? What is their absence rate like? Going round and speaking to people is the only real indicator.

As others have said, definitely accept the offered place - if you don't you may be without a place in September. Accepting will not prejudice any appeal.

Find out where you are on the waiting lists of your preferred schools.

How far away is the offered school? If it is local then that's a good thing. I would talk it up to your son as he may end up going there. There must be records of GCSE results for the last two years even tho no exams were sat. Go and visit if you can - see what it feels like. what are the students like? How do staff interact with them?

I would never rely on Ofsted information, particularly from five years ago. I would place much more emphasis on going to visit the school (preferably on a normal day) and looking around to gauge what’s on offer, the atmosphere around the school, behaviour in corridors, willingness of staff and students to answer questions etc.

A school judged inadequate 5 years ago is unlikely to still be inadequate. It will have become a sponsored academy if it wasn't one already. If it was an academy already, it may have moved to a different multi-academy trust. So there will have been major changes. Please do not decide against this school on the basis of an old inspection. And, whatever you do, don't reject the place. Rejecting it won't help you get a place elsewhere and means you have no backup if your appeal fails.

An inadequate school only has a limited time to improve. If there is no significant improvement then it will be shut down. After 5 years the school must have improved, otherwise it wouldn't still be open.
There are monitoring inspections to check progress done by HMI or the LEA, but these are not made public in the same way as OFSTED reports.
You cannot base an appeal on the allocated school's OFSTED rating. These are often out of date some schools will have improved significantly and others will have gone downhill (Outstanding schools are often not inspected again for many years).

Accept the offer.

Put yourself on waiting lists for other schools.

By all means appeal for a specific school, but remember you don’t appeal against the school you have been allocated and that only certain criteria will apply (liking one school more than another school or thinking it is better than others won’t hold weight).

Also it is worth checking why none of your other preferences resulted in an offer. Did you apply to more than one school? Did you have a safe “banker” that was a reasonable compromise in terms of distance? Did the LA assess your application correctly ie is your address correct and distance to other schools accurately recorded?

Go visit it

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who took the time to reply. Unfortunately, we live in a village with a very small number of "catchment" schools. Your advice has been invaluable though and helped me to see a way forward which I couldn't see last week as I was caught up in the stress of it all! I have accepted the place, have sorted out the waiting lists, will probably appeal but am also going to have another very careful look at the "inadequate" school we have been offered. Thank you!

You'll probably find the school will improve dramatically over the next 2 years. Our local high school had a dire OFSTED just before my son was due to go there. There also seemed to be quite a big problem with bullying. Within 12 months they'd moved a different head in and everything improved in leaps and bounds.