Alperton downgraded after first post-academisation Ofsted inspection

Alperton Community School which received an Outstanding grade in its previous Ofsted Inspection has been downgraded to Requiring Improvement in the latest inspection, which is the first since it converted to academy status in September 2012. The full report is available HERE

The Report states the school requires improvement because:
 

·       Students’ achievement is below expectations in a number of subjects, including English.

·       Not enough teaching is good or outstanding, especially in English.

·       Teachers do not set challenging work in all subjects, particularly for the most able students.

·       Students do not do enough extended writing in all subjects.

·       Teachers’ marking does not always help students to do better. Students sometimes do not respond to teachers’ feedback and this restricts how well their work improves.

·       Teachers sometimes fail to check if students understand the work taught during lessons, which hinders their progres

·      The school’s leaders do not compare what they know about students’ progress between Years 7 to 11 with national expectations in all subjects.

·      Some subject leaders do not have the skills to improve the quality of teaching and students’ achievement quickly enough in their subjects.

·      Senior leaders do not evaluate aspects of the school’s performance, such as the impact of teaching on students’ achievement, precisely enough.

·      The sixth form requires improvement because students’ results vary too much between subjects.

 However Ofsted did identify the following strengths:

·      Weaknesses in teaching and staff under- performance are being effectively attended to by the newly appointed headteacher.

·      Students’ behaviour is good in and out of lessons. Students are safe.

·      Attendance levels are higher than average.

·      The governing body challenges the school’s leaders and holds them to account for students’ achievement.

·      Students achieve well in mathematics and science.

·      Lower ability students, and those who speak English as an additional language, achieve well.

  

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Copland’s Green Left Reds are Over the Moon

...But celebrations marred by Unsporting Conduct from the Managers

Guest blog by ‘Shankly’s  Pony’ 

Green Left Reds may be a political niche too far, but all Wembley Matters readers can take some pleasure in the success this season of local lad and ex Copland student Raheem Sterling. In addition to helping to guide Liverpool FC to League success and being selected for England’s World Cup campaign in Brazil, last weekend  Raheem  achieved the ultimate accolade: starring in Paul Trevillion’s  cult comic strip ’You Are The Ref’ in Sunday’s Observer (above). 

At the footballing star’s old school, however,  foul play is the norm. Fourteen more compulsory redundancies are among the fixtures for this term, despite the IEB’s promise that there would be none. Copland’s athletics and football  fields will be flogged off for housing or offices just as soon as they can figure out who actually owns the land and how the little matter of the title restriction can be fixed.  Strangely enough, events at the school seem more and more to be influenced by the world of professional football. 

Having early on adopted the Millwall fans’ slogan of ‘Nobody likes us, We don’t care’ (accepting reality rather than out of choice) the management  handed Copland over to a bunch of dodgy millionaires (as at Chelsea,Fulham FC, Manchester City, Cardiff et al).  To find  the new school’s new  ‘manager’ these shysters plumped for  the ‘Chosen One’ method which they presumably  judged had been so  successful in selecting  David Moyes for Man United. The  drafted-in owners are now trying to impose  a new name on the school (as at Hull City) and are about to completely  change the school strip (see Cardiff).  Soon the ground will be moved (not quite as far as Milton Keynes, see Wimbledon FC) and most of the ground staff have already been ‘let go’.   

If, in September,  the school actually is taken over by the ‘Chosen One’   Ms Bates, (no relation to Leeds United’s Ken, hopefully) , Copland will have had more managers in recent times than the notoriously profligate Blackburn Rovers  (six since you ask). This is not to mention the Delia Smith connection (Ark Wembley head, TV cook and Norwich City majority shareholder) or the remarkable similarities between the  organisational prowess demonstrated by respectively Ark’s attempt at a consultation and Torquay United’s attempt at a defence. 

But as we enter the end-of-season  ‘run-in’,  the mythmakers of Ofsted are about to show that it’s all been worthwhile. At the end of the summer term the final prewritten chapter of the prewritten narrative journey will be taken down off the shelf and added to last autumn’s  Prewritten Ofsted Inspection  Report 1    ( ‘It’s going to be a struggle but if we all pull together, and with 58 redundancies, Copland might just make it’) which was followed by last month’s release of Prewritten Ofsted Inspection Report 2  ( ‘Following tough DfE  policies, honest and objective Ofsted verification, and 75 redundancies, Everything at Copland is Getting Better and Better ’).   

Leaks from the government department which writes these things confirmed last October  that the final chapter, due in July,  declares: ‘Mission Accomplished!: After 119 redundancies and with the new leaner and fitter curriculum offer of only 2 subjects (Malaysian Maths and Singaporean Maths)  Copland is now Fit For Purpose! The management and both remaining members of the teaching staff are to be congratulated on their achievement.’ 

By then, of course, Raheem Sterling’s form might well have continued on its current trajectory and brought England  a hat full of goals in Brazil. Let’s hope so.  It’s just a  pity that  the only ones celebrating at what remains of his old school will be a bunch of hedge fund billionaires, the spineless guardians of local democracy at Brent Council (or those who survived the May 22 play-offs),  a couple of hapless Future Leaders:  and Michael Gove. 

Never mind, you can be confident that, with Ofsted providing the facts and figures to support their ‘evidence-based’ bullshit (and nobody around anymore to remember what life was actually like before the Pigs took over) , it will inevitably go down in history as the greatest season Copland ever had.

Save Our Sulivan school is a child-centred campaign that deserves our whole-hearted support

Outside Hammersmith Town Hall

Parents, pupils, teachers and governors  lobbied the Hammersmith and Fulham Council at Hammersmith Town Hall this evening to try and save Sulivan Primary School. 'Save Our Hospitals' campaigner were there in  support.

The Council want to  move the pupils to nearby New Kings School to enable a Free School for 800 boys to take over the Sulivan site. The sting in the tail of this proposal is that New King's has decided to become an academy with private sponsorship, contrary to the values of Sulivan Primary.

The 'consultation' took place, as so many do, when people were away for the long summer holiday.

The campaign website describes Sulivan School LINK:

• It is rated ‘GOOD WITH OUTSTANDING FEATURES’
• It is full in nursery and reception – 299 parents have chosen Sulivan
• It has earned some of its highest results ever in recent years with amazing achievement and progress
  
• It is a small, beautiful school with lovely grounds including large play areas and an outdoor science laboratory

The demonstration began at 5.30pm at this last Cabinet before the consultation.  The Council had refused to hear a delegation on technical grounds but eventually they were given 5 minutes to present their case

It is clear from the comments that have been circulating on Twitter @SaveOurSulivan  that Sulivan is exactly the sort of small, family-centred , creative school that we in the Green Party favour and it is great to see it getting such vociferous support from parents. They deserve maximum support.

Here are some of the Twitter comments:

'Learning for life' -and Learning outside!! Lets keep it that way! 

 we have wonderful courgette flowers in the sulivan school garden ready for eating - yum yum - how many schools can report that!

'oh what a perfect place, we want to keep it our Sulivan school' name the song!!

Sulivan children bake cookies to help save their school! @lbhf council can't say no to a cookie baked with such love 

 Amazing Gardens for exploring, cooking, science and conservation. Children don't want bricks - they want EARTH

 Sulivan is one of the top performing primaries in @lbhf - and in high demand. Closing us makes ZERO sense.

 @jamieoliver we cook fab meals from kitchen garden for the children and they also have their own kitchen - we even cook for the Lycee

  Twicktor Meldrew ‏@twicktormeldrew 31 Aug
Not in my Borough, but I'll mention @SaveOurSulivan. @LBHF want to shut Sulivan Primary School to open another lardy di da free school!

 Very sad to try and remove the opportunities Sulivan gives to poor local children of all cultures. #shameful

 Our chn learn science, data collecting, conservation. Some @hfconscllrs see this 'too good 4 our chn' - we don't

 Children in portacabins so that the property can be fixed up at our cost and given away to a private school chain

 Local children in #fulham are petitioning to save their school! Support the youth of the community - help Save Sulivan

Kingsbury Teachers' Strike Given Go Ahead

The national action committees of the NUT and NASUWT have given the go ahead for a strike at Kingsbury High School on Thursday 29th September. Approval was given in the light of the 84.5% of staff who voted against becoming an academy,  the headteacher's and governors' refusal to hold a ballot of parents and the lack of any cast iron legally binding agreements on maintaining teachers' statutory national pay and conditions. The Kingsbury Parents' Action Group have told the unions that over 60 parents have supported th call for a parents' ballot and the number is growing.

In an e-mail to members Hank Roberts Secretary of the Brent NUT and John Schwager Secretary of Brent NASUWT say:

No educator would take strike action except as a last resort and in the most exceptional circumstances. Kingsbury High becoming an Academy would overturn 90 years of national pay and conditions and potentially destroy a long history of cooperation between schools in the London Borough of Brent.

For those who question the medium to long-term consequences of the Gove agenda to state education, look no further than America, where similar reforms in charter schools have led to a wide range of damaging consequences to the teaching profession. This is from the Texas Tribune 27.01.2010 ‘Charter Schools Battle High Teacher Turnover’:

In all, more than 40 of nearly 200 charter operators the state tracked — some which oversee multiple schools — had to replace more than half their teaching staffs before the last school year. Even more established and successful operators, including KIPP and YES Prep in Houston, lose nearly a third of their teachers annually. In contrast, just six of more than 1,000 non-charter school districts statewide had more than half their teachers leave, and none of the 20 largest school districts had a turnover rate higher than 16 percent.

Huge increases in workload and the decimation of Teacher Unions in these schools have led to teacher burnout rates sky-rocketing. Does anyone seriously doubt this is what Gove intends? Does anyone seriously doubt that Gove thinks teachers are lazy and overpaid and that the union’s role is to defend this? And that by opening up markets and atomizing the state system he will achieve what the Charter schools have achieved in America and point to it as a success?

All teachers must ask themselves what kind of profession – our profession – we want to see. We are fighting for a profession that allows a long, sustainable career. We are fighting for a profession that has fair pay and conditions set nationally. We are fighting for a profession that allows teachers to teach and children to learn without excessive hours chained to a desk. We are fighting to preserve our state comprehensive education  system.

Kingsbury High Pupils Strike Against Academy Plans and Lack of Consultation

Kingsbury High pupils are planning "strike action" today (Friday) at 9-9.30am to protest at plans to turn it into an academy and not being fully consulted on the plans.

At 9.15 when the bell goes, pupils were due to refuse to go to lessons and remain on the field/playground of Princes Ave (upper school site) instead.

Woodfield says NO to academy conversion

The governors of Woodfield Sports College having agreed to pursue academy status in May, decided to drop the proposal at a governors meeting on June 13th. 

This followed a secret ballot in which nearly three quarters of the teaching staff voted to oppose the academy proposal. Union members also voted overwhelmingly to take strike action if necessary to keep Woodfield within the local authority family of schools.

I understand that Brent Council also intervened positively in the debate. If this marks a more proactive stance in safeguarding the local family of democratically accountable schools, it is very welcome.

Headteacher's Letter to Holland Park Parents

Here is the evidence of the Holland Park headteacher's rush to academy status. Note the lack of any attempt to acknowledge that there may be a case against conversion.

Click image to enlarge