Local comp now inadequate

[shockeditellyou]

Looking for stories of hope...

Our local comp has just been rated Inadequate by Ofsted, with behaviour as the reason. We have just done transfer applications for my DS who will start Y7 next school year; we put our local comp down last as we didn't rate it, but it's our catchment school and realistically is probably where we will end up going.

What happens next? Every other secondary we can reasonably get to is seriously oversubscribed. The area is generally a nice middle class area and there is a cohort of "good" parents at the school who want their kids to do well, but they seem to be fatalistic, not realise how much better a school could be and generally try and keep their kids out of trouble. It's so much worse (results, behaviour, you name it) than all the other local secondaries and I don't understand why.

Realistically how can the school be turned around? They are going to have a nightmare recruiting staff!

@shockeditellyou does the school already have academy status or is it run by the LA? If it isn't an academy already, this judgement is likely to be the catalyst for it to be handed to an academy trust with a track record of turning inadequate schools around. If it is already an academy, it may be handed over to a new trust. Either way, the school will then receive targeted support and intervention to help it improve, which is probably exactly what it needs. So try to see it as a good thing.

My biggest concern would be staff turnover. There's a national shortage of specialist teachers for almost all subjects. See graph. Even some of the best schools are struggling to recruit good teachers, so your school is likely to be struggling even more. If they have a lot of supply teachers, and inexperienced teachers, and non-specialists (e.g. PE teachers taking maths classes) it's not surprising that students get frustrated/bored and behave badly. That's not excusing them, but it's likely to be part of the explanation. This is not going to change quickly, so explain it to your child (to help them understand) and if you can provide support at home or afford tutors for key subjects then do.

The tutor suggestion sticks in my throat because I can't help thinking if all the people making money out of tutoring would join the school workforce instead, it might help the situation, but we are where we are, sadly.

Lets hope the next parliament has more positive news for schools!

Yeah, it's already part of an academy trust, who I had thought were generally quite good. However, this school has been an outlier on the Trust's performance for years, and why has it taken them so long to do something about it?

The OFSTED report also lays into staff, and I know there has been turnover but knowing how tight school workforces are at the moment, I have no idea how they intend to fill any roles that need replacing. Morale must be pretty crappy...