Humphrey Perkins in special measures
HUMPHREY Perkins School has been put into ‘special measures’ after its latest Ofsted inspection.
The school in Barrow-upon-Soar was inspected by the governing body in June and the report was released on Friday, October 27.
The report deems that the school is ‘inadequate’ - the lowest possible grade - in all five of the assessed areas including the effectiveness of leadership and management, the quality of teaching, learning and assessment, personal development, behaviour and welfare and outcomes for pupils.
It will now go into ‘special measures’ which is a status applied by regulators of public services in Britain to providers who fall short of acceptable standards.
Ofsted previously deemed the school as ‘good’ when it was last inspected in 2013.
In the new report teaching was described as “mundane and repetitive” and that it failed to “enthuse pupils.”
The report also states that “since the previous inspection, the quality of teaching has declined and leaders have not been doing enough to tackle poor teaching.”
Another area of concern for inspectors was with regards to bullying figures. The report states “Recorded incidents of bullying are extremely low and leaders believe that there is confusion over what constitutes bullying.”
Other comments included that “teachers’ planning is weak. Activities for pupils lack challenge, leading to slow progress for the majority of pupils” while the report states that non-specialist teachers do not receive the training they need to help them teach pupils more effectively.
Miss Jill Walton took over as headteacher of the school in the summer, and told the Echo: “I am committed to leading the school out of special measures.
“To assist the school in this journey, I have secured additional support from the Leicester Teaching School (LeTS) run by the highly successful and outstanding Rushey Mead Academy, who have many years’ experience of school improvement.
“As part of this support, Humphrey Perkins welcomes Mrs Bernadette Green, a former Leicester City headteacher, into the role of consultant headteacher.
“She will be working with me to ensure rapid progress across all of the Ofsted priorities as outlined in the inspection report.
“The school has already received its first DfE Department of Education) monitoring visit. During this visit, the senior advisor confirmed the new leadership of the school has the capacity to implement a raft of effective strategies to bring about positive change.
“An action plan is due to be submitted to Ofsted within the next six weeks and the school is currently working with the DfE to explore different multi-academy trust options.”
Miss Walton told the Echo that there are no planned staff redundancies, and that she does not know how long it will take for the school to be out of special measures.