Brent Council CEO Christine Gilbert Announces ‘Whistle Blowing Hotline’

Christine Gilbert

 

 

                       Confidential hotline for concerned staff’ planned.

Guest Blog by 'Gilbert Harding'

Christine Gilbert, perpetual ‘interim’ CEO of Brent Council which, together with HR lead and interpersonal staff relations role-model Cara Davani, was recently found guilty of racial discrimination, victimisation and workplace bullying,  has announced her plans  to set up ‘a confidential whistle-blower hotline so that any staff who had serious concerns’ could communicate their worries to their bosses.

This would be a great relief to those many Brent Council employees who have, openly on this blog, privately to Martin Francis, and most recently and publicly to Private Eye, expressed their ‘serious concerns’ about bullying, victimisation, threats of dismissal, cronyism, gagging clauses  and corruption at Brent Council’s Civic Centre.  Such a move would be welcomed as an appropriate intervention by a leader wanting to find out what was really going on in her organisation with a view to turning a troubled situation round in an open and transparent way.  

Slightly disappointingly, however, Ms Gilbert made the whistle-blower announcement quoted above not recently but a whole 6 years ago on December 10^th 2008 to a Commons Select Committee and in relation to her then job as Head of Ofsted (the previous employer also of Cara Davani, Clive Heaphy and Ark Academies employee Dame Sally Morgan).    

(Details HERE )

Nevertheless, Brent Council staff will be feeling confident that Ms Gilbert’s passionate desire to let some light into the murkier corners of institutional malpractice will not have faded since her earlier statement and that her principles remain intact.

 Indeed, one hooded and masked Civic Centre employee was relaxed enough yesterday to tell me, in an unsigned encrypted  message smuggled out  past a cordon of G4S security personnel and hidden in a camouflage-pattern green and  brown envelope :  ‘I think I can speak for all my anonymous colleagues when I say that I believe Ms Gilbert’s earlier interest in openness and transparency and her very real and publicly declared desire to tap into the honest, uncensored and unintimidated experience of the people she leads, still burn as  brightly now in 2014 as they did in 2008.’

A statement from Ms Gilbert on plans for a new updated whistle-blower hotline is now expected. But perhaps not for another 6 years.

Alternatively, less patient Civic Centre whistle-blowers may find it more productive to communicate their serious concerns more urgently to Private Eye's 'Rotten Boroughs' contact here:

                                            tim.minogue@private-eye.co.uk.

(Ms Gilbert was unavailable for comment).

Natalie Bennett: Abolish politicised Ofsted & replace with collaborative body

 

Cartoon: Rose Asquith, Education Guardian

Natalie Bennett's letter to the Guardian today

Your vox pop of senior education figures (The verdict on Ofsted? ‘requires improvement’, Education, 28 October) was damning. It is clear that all trust has been lost; Ofsted is regarded as a highly politicised, untrustworthy, damaging organisation. That’s one reason why the Green party is calling for its abolition and replacement with continuous collaborative assessment and a national council of educational excellence working closely with local authorities.

Of course we need more change than that. The state of Ofsted is a reflection of the state of a system that is vastly overfocused on exams, has lost local democratic accountability, and has left teachers overworked, disempowered and increasingly demoralised.

Natalie Bennett
Leader, Green party

Another reason why a politicised Ofsted is not fit for purpose: the Green's alternative

The Guardian has revealed that so-called 'super head' Rachel de Souza of the Inspiration Trust, who has Michael Gove as a groupy, received advance notice of Ofsted inspections LINK

This is just one more example of the politicisation of Ofsted and its harnessing to serve the aims of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) for the privatisation of education.

The Green Party recognised this as its Spring Conference this year and approved a policy to replace Ofsted with a body based on school improvement through collaboration.

Here are extracts from the policy:
 

--> ED056 The Green Party will instate a system of local accountability using continuous, collaborative assessment of schools. We would replace OFSTED with an independent National Council of Educational Excellence which would have regional officers tasked to work closely with Local Authorities. The National Council would be closely affiliated with the National Federation for Educational Research (NFER).

ED057 Where pupils’ attainment and progress is reported as part of a school’s holistic report to parents and the wider community it will include assessments, including value-added, moderated by the National Council of Education Excellence and the Local Authority’s School Improvement Service as well as the school’s own self evaluation.

ED076 Secondary and college students will have a right to attend meetings of the Governing Body and members of the elected School Council will have voting rights. Governing Bodies in primary schools will have the duty to regularly consult with the elected pupil School Council.

ED077 In accordance with Green Party philosophy the running of the school will be devolved as much as possible to the school within the above guidelines.

ED078 The Local Authority and National Council of Educational Excellence will be involved in monitoring the structures to ensure there is consistency of standards and level of involvement and to help to share best practice.

Brent's Corporate Management Team - looking after each other

Brent Green Party and Brent Trades Union Council in their calls for an independent investigation into Brent Council have included an investigation into previous business and employment relationships of senior officers.

Christine Gilbert is an ex-Chief Executive of Tower Hamlets Counci and ex-chief of Ofsted. She became Interim Chief Executive of Brent Council following the row between Muhammed Butt (who had ousted former leader Ann John) and the then Chief Executive Gareth Daniel.

Daniel evetually left with a payment of £200,702.

In the course of the row three members of Brent's Corporate Management Team had written in Daniel's defence.

Clive Heaphy,  Chief Finance Officer of Brent Council, formerly Interim Director of Finance at Ofsted  employed Cara Davani on a £700 a day contract as Interim Head of HR. She was previously Director of Human Resources at Tower Hamlets Council and had worked as a consultant for Ofsted

Cara Davani was originally contracted with Brent Council by Heaphy, and her fees paid through Cara Davani Ltd., although the Brent Audit investigation found no written contract existed. Davani's initial engagement was from March 2012 to 31st October 2012.

Cara Davani drew up Christine Gilbert's contract which included payment into her private companty Christine Gilbert Associates in September 2012. She earned £100,000 in six months and later took up an additional job in Haringey. LINK

Clive Heaphy who had been suspended in August 2012 as Chief Finance Officer of Brent Council on grounds, later withdrawn, of gross misconduct, left the Council shortly after Daniel's departure and the day before Christine Gilbert's appointment as Acting Chief Executive. She took up the post officially on November 5th 2012.

Heaphy left with a payment of £140,508.

Fiona Ledden, Head of Legal and Procurement, wrote the report that recommended to the Council that Christine Gilbert continue as Interim Chief Executive until after the 2014 local elections.

Fiona Ledden prevented me from speaking to Brent Council on the issue of the appointment of a permanent Chief Executive. Correspondence about whether she was correct in that decision continues.

Christine Gilbert will continue as Interim Chief Executive during the Autum and Spring according to Muhammed Butt so that she can work on the new Borough Plan.

A  recruitment process for a permananent Chief Executive will begin in 2015.

No Minutes for Wednesday's Planning Committee Meeting

The Agenda for the Planning Committee due to be held on Wednesday August 20th states that the Minutes of the previous meeting are not available and will be presented at the next meeting.

The previous meeting on July 16th heard the controversial Kensal Rise Library application and some weighty legal advice was given by officers.

It is very unusual for Minutes not to be available more than one month after a meeting.  Perhaps this underlines the case for the recording of all Brent council meetings.

Missing or delayed Minutes for a school governing body would be an issue of grave concern to Ofsted inspectors or auditors.

Another Brent primary school's Ofsted rating plummets

St Mary's Roman Catholic Primary School in Canterbury Road, Kilburn has seen its Ofsted rating drop from Grade 2 'Good' to Grade 4 'Inadequate' and has been put in 'Special Measures'.

The report of the inspection carried out in March LINK gives Achievement of pupils, Quality of teaching and Bhevaiour and safety of pupils a Grade 3 'Requiring improvement' but Leadership and Management is singled out for a Grade 4 'Indequate'.

Under Ofsted guidelines a 4 for Leadership and Management (which includes senior leadership and governorship)  means that the overall judgement on the school must also be 4.

Most worrying from the point of view of Brent Council is that Ofsted report:

The local authority has not provided good enough guidance or support to help the school to improve

The support provided by the local authority was an issue for the Brent Education Commission  that reported last month and should be seen in the context of cuts in local authority funding leading to a reduction in School Improvement Services. Brent Council is due to offer only core support in future with the Brent Schools Partnership taking over many of its functions.

There is a risk attached to this and I would hope that the Overview and Scrutiny Committee will have a thorough look at the plans for the School Improvement Service, school-to-school support and the role of School Improvement Partners  to ensure that there is early warning through thorough monitoring and effective action when a school begins to show signs of decline.

Diminishing democracy in Brent - an update

At the time of the local elections the Brent Green Party called for an independent investigation into the following issues in Brent Council:

1. Corporate Management Team officers being paid through their private companies rather than normal pay roll
2. The contractual arrangements for CMT officers and interim appointments
3. Previous employment and business connections between senior offices appointed by Brent Council on an interim basis
4. The working culture of the Human Resources department 
5. Brent Council's Whistle Blowing Policy to ensure that it adequately protects whistle-blowers from harassment and retribution

To which a reader added:
6. Instances of council policies, procedures, standing orders, scheme of delegation etc being circumvented.

Secondly, there is the important issue of the appointment of Chief Executive.  Christine Gilbert's acting role was extended by the Brent Executive  until after the local elections on the recommendation of Fiona Ledden, Head of Legal and Procurement. The report stated:

The recruitment process for a new permanent  Chief Executive should be delayed because the current recruitment process for  three other CEs in London boroughs would limit the quality of candidates, to allow the restructuring of council senior management to go ahead smoothly, and  to ensure continuity and reputation management over the move to the Civic Centre and the 2014 local elections.

No independent investigation has been launched by the new Labour administration and no open recruitment process has started for a permanent Chief Executive.

Copland: Did Premature Ejaculation Rule Out Final Ofsted Visit?

Guest blog by ‘Pamela Stephenson-Connolly’

For those who like closure in their stories these are frustrating times. With only 2 weeks of the school year left it has been announced that, due to illness, Copland’s final Ofsted inspection visit will not now take place. This will mean that the HMI’s  written report of the visit may have to be put back on the shelf for a while. This is quite unnecessary, however, as the 3 reports published after earlier visits this year indicated that the actual inspections had little influence on the final reports,  the content and assertions of which were overwhelmingly determined by the DfE/Ofsted’s pre-written narrative of which the reports simply formed a  part. LINK to http://wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/copland-is-getting-goves-reverse-trojan_11.html 

The nature of the narrative arc was set in the first Ofsted report this year (‘the interim headteacher and associate headteacher and very strong governance of the IEB are driving change well’) and it soon became clear that the reports’ principle purpose was to portray  the ‘saving’ of a school by Gove, his ‘useful idiots’ Pavey, Marshall, John, Price and the rest of the IEB, through  forced academisation, ‘tough’ but necessary action, (60 staff and half the curriculum axed), and finally the salvation that would be The Ark Rescue (and thence onward ultimately to privatisation). The report on the final inspection, now postponed, would have provided the climactic instalment.

There are some, however, who are sceptical about the official reasons given for the cancellation of the inspection and support their case by reference to the tone of fevered over-excitement in the last report in March  ( ‘We can see hope now.’ This new-found optimism is palpable!’ etc). These sceptics contend that this March report in fact read more like the climax (‘richer quality of learning…yes!…rigour…yes!…challenge…yes!…more this, more that…...yes yes!…  more rigour still….   yes yes!….best practice…yes yes yes!………..cutting edge……more more more! …….yes yes yes! …ooooohhh ……’ etc)   and that the inspectors reached this climax too early. In a kind of Ofsted premature ejaculation they came too soon to what they should have delayed until later, ie the final triumphant inspection report written to justify the whole year’s evisceration of the school, its curriculum, its staff and its soul. The inability to defer gratification left Ofsted with nothing left in the tank for the final report, hence the cancellation.

The rumour surrounding this theory now joins a litany of other half-believed stories which have circulated in recent months at the school. Here’s a sample.

Rumour 1.    Subject: No Ofsted Inspection (Alternative explanation 1)

According to this one, after the Trojan Horse fiasco, nobody believes Ofsted anymore and Copland’s new owners, Ark,  didn’t want their new property tainted by association. Ark wide-boy and Tory party contributor Lord Fink had a word with Cameron who told Gove, ‘No inspection or I’ll unleash Theresa May on you and you stay on the naughty step for another month’.   ‘Sorted, Dave’, was apparently Gove’s reply.

Rumour 2.     Subject: New School House Names

Apparently, the Ark functionary who decided to impose the name Harold M.Elvin Academy on the new school is determined to continue this theme in other areas. Accordingly, the new school house names are to be similarly influenced by stars of 1970s Philly Soul and will be called

Delphonics, Stylistics, O’Jays, Spinners, Trammps, Sweet Sensations

Plans to change the boys’ school uniform to wide-lapelled velvet jackets, flares and platform shoes with contrast laces and to adopt ‘Betcha By Golly Wow’ as the school motto were considered a step too far, however.  

 (The proposal for ‘Backstabbers’ to be the Leadership Team Motivational Song for the new Ark era was nevertheless accepted unanimously).

Rumour 3.   Subject: No Ofsted Inspection (Alternative Explanation 2) 

 

This rumour claimed that the final Ofsted inspection would, in fact, still take place and it would be on Thursday 10^th July when almost all the staff would be on strike and the school would be closed to students. An inspection of an empty school would achieve 2 objectives. Firstly, the incidence of pupil misbehaviour would be substantially less. (The March Ofsted report’s claims that ‘behaviour is much improved and the school is a more respectful place…’  were laughed at by staff who know the reality. ‘The worst it’s ever been’ was what I was told by one experienced teacher in a position to know and with no axe to grind. Hardly surprising when support staff, student supervisors and an entire mentoring department have been scrapped this year and the remaining hard-pressed staff regularly receive messages asking them to help out ‘as we are rather understaffed today’. No kidding!).

The second reason to visit on a strike day would be so that the HMI could see at first hand one great growth area at Copland which is a direct result of the IEB/Marshall regime. Up until last September Copland’s annual loss of teaching days through strike action averaged less than 1 day per year. This year, since the imposition of IEB/Marshall, that figure has improved by about 800% year on year. Having shot their bolt over teaching and learning standards in the March report, Ofsted could have at last begun to retumesce on this one great sign of progress. ( ‘We can see solidarity now. The new-found disillusionment and militancy is palpable!’). It would have made enjoyable reading.

Copland will close next Wednesday and that’s not a rumour. None of the staff forced out over the last year have received any kind of recognition from IEB/Marshall: no leaving ceremonies, no presentations, no collections, no leaving speeches, no spoken thanks, no written communications of gratitude for their contribution. Nothing. Instead, those taking ‘voluntary’ redundancy have received a letter which begins with the sensitive formulation: ‘I write to confirm your dismissal from the services of the school on the grounds of redundancy’.

In a way this is a fitting end to a decline which began with Ofsted failing Alan Davies’s Copland on Safeguarding. (Failing to safeguard the students, that is, not the public funds in the school budget. Ofsted had been quite happy with Davies/Evans/Patel’s financial management of the school, as had Brent Council. It was the staff who blew the whistle on the £2.7 million scam and the staff who suffered the consequences: a series of clueless appointments at senior management level (with new managers primed by Brent to regard the staff as ‘the problem’), and a refusal by Brent either to pursue the missing money or to balance this refusal by acknowledging its responsibility for the resulting budget deficit).

So it goes. For the moment, the city boys, the privatisers, the self-seeking ‘non-political’ careerists and the bullshitters are in the ascendancy. Schools as exam-grade factories will dominate for a while. But they’re only a manifestation of a particular point on the greater narrative arc of our society. If Copland’s teachers have achieved anything in the school’s varied and mostly honourable history it will have been to have helped produce kids who will grow into adults who will appreciate the limitations of this essentially sterile ‘vision’ and  come together to do something positive to change it. 

I wonder where that would feature in an Ofsted inspector’s checklist of teacher achievements.

COPLAND IS GETTING GOVE’S ‘REVERSE -TROJAN -HORSE’ TREATMENT

Guest blog by Will Shaw

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, the bizarre events surrounding the Birmingham ‘Trojan Horse’ schools should have finally made clear that Ofsted exists to give the government the inspection reports it requires to support whatever its  schools strategy happens to be at any particular time. If the inspectors don’t come up with the right report they can be sent back into schools until they do. This is not usually necessary as the inspectors know what is expected of them and they dutifully supply it. Their lack of integrity or principled independence of thought can be measured by their deafening silence in objecting to this role over the years  and the extreme rarity of any individual resignations.

Ofsted inspections are a key weapon in the government’s overriding aim of ultimately turning  all (state) schools into centrally-run academies and  taking them out of local democratic accountability.  Once Ofsted supplies the government with the ‘appropriate’ inspection report on a school, the next stage is special measures, the imposition from outside of a non-accountable IEB  and forced academisation. This is the stage Copland has been at since last September. 

Obviously, this stage in the process has to appear  to be both necessary and beneficial and it’s Ofsted again which is used to show how much schools like Copland  improve as a result of the government’s wise policies. At Copland, if the inspectors are to be believed, the beneficial results of government policy were almost instantaneous. Their report after last November’s visit spoke of  the school having ‘turned a corner’ and ‘students making better progress’. It continued ‘ teaching …..attendance and punctuality are improving’, ‘students are keen to learn’, ‘ there has been a sea-change in the pace of improvement’, ‘the interim headteacher and associate headteacher and very strong governance of the IEB are driving this change well’ and so on; and all this after only 6 weeks! The nature of the narrative had been set. 

March 2014’s Copland report took the hagiography to the next level:  ‘… the  headteacher of St Paul’s Way is an astute Chair of the Interim Executive Board….. IEB members are asking the right questions about the school’s performance.. balanced in the rigour of challenge and in the quality of their support. Senior leaders are ‘stepping up to the plate’ more …. having greater impact on the work of the school ……... responding well to the high level of challenge being laid down by school leaders and the IEB... ……more accurate understanding of students’ needs  ……..higher expectations for students……  behaviour is much improved and the school is a more respectful place…… zero tolerance to poor behaviour … ….. an attitude of respect between and among students and staff……more confident and articulate learners. …….a richer quality of teaching…..teaching is better… lessons are more structured’. Clearly carried away with the spirit of the thing, the reporting inspector at one point came over all Mills and Boon and, revealing  a bureaucrat’s tin ear for the speech patterns of 21^st century London youth,   wrote this:

 ‘One student, capturing the views of many, said, ‘We can see hope now.’ This new-found optimism is palpable’.  

 (I like to imagine the inspector considering whether to  attribute the final 6 words to this ‘student’ as well, but wisely deciding that this might be pushing it a bit). 

It’s difficult not to laugh (if only at the writers’ belief that they could get away with this tosh) but many teachers and pupils have worked very hard at Copland this year and it’s a pity that any truth which these Ofsted reports might contain is tarnished by the relentless gung-ho bollocks  of the rest of it. But then, establishing  the truth is not at all what these inspections are about. How could they be when 2 inspectors come in for a day and a half and watch 10 or 15 minutes of a few lessons?  No, as in Birmingham their function is to provide bogus supporting evidence for actions already decided on. In the case of Copland, we are being provided with the  narrative of the ‘saving’ of a school by Gove, forced academisation, ‘tough’ but necessary action, (60 staff and half the curriculum axed), and finally the salvation that is The Ark Rescue.  

It’s a satisfying narrative  so far and it will be interesting to see how far the Ofsted inspectors think they can push it when the report on their imminent final visit comes out in a few weeks time.  As the purpose of the report is pre-determined and as the inspectors know what is expected of them (and  also know that their continuing employment depends on their coming up with the goods), the report  might as well have been written last September. If it was, I hope they don’t change anything if they , by chance, should come across this blog. And if they’re looking for further fictional inspiration, what better place than in the sort of book that, if he’d ever read it, Michael Gove would surely have banned, if only for the fact that it isn’t even really a decent, proper, stout English novel but rather some thin, poncey, foreign-sounding thing called a ‘novella’: Animal Farm.

“It has become usual in Wembley to give Mr Gove, Michael Pavey, the IEB, the Interim Headteacher and the Associate Headteacher  the credit for every successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune at the school. You will often hear one pupil remark to another, “Under the guidance of our Senior Leadership Team  I have progressed  five levels in six months” or two teachers, enjoying a drink at the staffroom water-cooler, will exclaim, “thanks to the leadership of Headteacher  Marshall and  Associate Headteacher John, how excellent this water tastes!”...” (With apologies to  George Orwell).

The next Copland Ofsted visit is ‘imminent’  and the inspector’s report will be published in a few week’s time. But please remember, and thanks to Martin, you read it here first.

COPLAND IS GETTING GOVE’S ‘REVERSE -TROJAN -HORSE’ TREATMENT

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Guest blog by Will Shaw

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, the bizarre events surrounding the Birmingham ‘Trojan Horse’ schools should have finally made clear that Ofsted exists to give the government the inspection reports it requires to support whatever its  schools strategy happens to be at any particular time. If the inspectors don’t come up with the right report they can be sent back into schools until they do. This is not usually necessary as the inspectors know what is expected of them and they dutifully supply it. Their lack of integrity or principled independence of thought can be measured by their deafening silence in objecting to this role over the years  and the extreme rarity of any individual resignations.

Ofsted inspections are a key weapon in the government’s overriding aim of ultimately turning  all (state) schools into centrally-run academies and  taking them out of local democratic accountability.  Once Ofsted supplies the government with the ‘appropriate’ inspection report on a school, the next stage is special measures, the imposition from outside of a non-accountable IEB  and forced academisation. This is the stage Copland has been at since last September. 

Obviously, this stage in the process has to appear  to be both necessary and beneficial and it’s Ofsted again which is used to show how much schools like Copland  improve as a result of the government’s wise policies. At Copland, if the inspectors are to be believed, the beneficial results of government policy were almost instantaneous. Their report after last November’s visit spoke of  the school having ‘turned a corner’ and ‘students making better progress’. It continued ‘ teaching …..attendance and punctuality are improving’, ‘students are keen to learn’, ‘ there has been a sea-change in the pace of improvement’, ‘the interim headteacher and associate headteacher and very strong governance of the IEB are driving this change well’ and so on; and all this after only 6 weeks! The nature of the narrative had been set. 

March 2014’s Copland report took the hagiography to the next level:  ‘… the  headteacher of St Paul’s Way is an astute Chair of the Interim Executive Board….. IEB members are asking the right questions about the school’s performance.. balanced in the rigour of challenge and in the quality of their support. Senior leaders are ‘stepping up to the plate’ more …. having greater impact on the work of the school ……... responding well to the high level of challenge being laid down by school leaders and the IEB... ……more accurate understanding of students’ needs  ……..higher expectations for students……  behaviour is much improved and the school is a more respectful place…… zero tolerance to poor behaviour … ….. an attitude of respect between and among students and staff……more confident and articulate learners. …….a richer quality of teaching…..teaching is better… lessons are more structured’. Clearly carried away with the spirit of the thing, the reporting inspector at one point came over all Mills and Boon and, revealing  a bureaucrat’s tin ear for the speech patterns of 21^st century London youth,   wrote this:

 ‘One student, capturing the views of many, said, ‘We can see hope now.’ This new-found optimism is palpable’.  

 (I like to imagine the inspector considering whether to  attribute the final 6 words to this ‘student’ as well, but wisely deciding that this might be pushing it a bit). 

It’s difficult not to laugh (if only at the writers’ belief that they could get away with this tosh) but many teachers and pupils have worked very hard at Copland this year and it’s a pity that any truth which these Ofsted reports might contain is tarnished by the relentless gung-ho bollocks  of the rest of it. But then, establishing  the truth is not at all what these inspections are about. How could they be when 2 inspectors come in for a day and a half and watch 10 or 15 minutes of a few lessons?  No, as in Birmingham their function is to provide bogus supporting evidence for actions already decided on. In the case of Copland, we are being provided with the  narrative of the ‘saving’ of a school by Gove, forced academisation, ‘tough’ but necessary action, (60 staff and half the curriculum axed), and finally the salvation that is The Ark Rescue.  

It’s a satisfying narrative  so far and it will be interesting to see how far the Ofsted inspectors think they can push it when the report on their imminent final visit comes out in a few weeks time.  As the purpose of the report is pre-determined and as the inspectors know what is expected of them (and  also know that their continuing employment depends on their coming up with the goods), the report  might as well have been written last September. If it was, I hope they don’t change anything if they , by chance, should come across this blog. And if they’re looking for further fictional inspiration, what better place than in the sort of book that, if he’d ever read it, Michael Gove would surely have banned, if only for the fact that it isn’t even really a decent, proper, stout English novel but rather some thin, poncey, foreign-sounding thing called a ‘novella’: Animal Farm.

“It has become usual in Wembley to give Mr Gove, Michael Pavey, the IEB, the Interim Headteacher and the Associate Headteacher  the credit for every successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune at the school. You will often hear one pupil remark to another, “Under the guidance of our Senior Leadership Team  I have progressed  five levels in six months” or two teachers, enjoying a drink at the staffroom water-cooler, will exclaim, “thanks to the leadership of Headteacher  Marshall and  Associate Headteacher John, how excellent this water tastes!”...” (With apologies to  George Orwell).

The next Copland Ofsted visit is ‘imminent’  and the inspector’s report will be published in a few week’s time. But please remember, and thanks to Martin, you read it here first.

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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