School ‘making progress’ after Ofsted report

BOYN HILL: All Saints School is making ‘astonishing’ progress since its inadequate Ofsted inspection, a meeting has heard – and those evaluating it are ‘confident’ that the school is on the right track.

An Ofsted inspection in February resulted in an ‘inadequate’ rating, with the report saying that struggling readers were ‘not getting the help they need’.

Clive Haines of Achieving for Children – which runs the borough’s children’s services – gave an update at a meeting of the Schools Improvement Forum on Monday.

He said the school’s governing body had been deemed ‘ineffective’ to hold the school to account.

As such, All Saints is becoming part of a multi-academy trust (MAT) – a group of academies that come together to form a charitable company.

A MAT has a single group of members who have an overview of the governance arrangements and a single board of trustees. It would not be a local authority controlled school.

This is a result of an academy order from the Department for Education, which it can do if an Ofsted inspection has rated a school as inadequate or governance failures have been discovered.

In January there was a change of leadership and the Ofsted inspection came six weeks after.

The school ‘fell down’ on the quality of education and leadership, the meeting heard.

Navroop Mehat, interim executive head of All Saints, said that one of the problems was a curriculum that was not well-sequenced between school years from nursery onwards.

The school has looked to build up a ‘key link’ to make sure phonics progress isn’t being lost between infants and juniors.

The school has a ‘strong’ phonics programme in place, with children practising daily phonics ‘religiously’. The aim is to get children to move on from phonics and onto reading.

“They have made staggering progress,” said Ms Mehat. “It’s a shame [All Saints] has got this judgement because it will put people off but the school has some really high-quality things going on.”

Mr Haines added: “We have seen a lot of parents’ feedback that’s positive and how accelerated reading is helping their [children’s] learning.”

He said he was ‘confident’ that the progress made since Ofsted’s last visit will result in the inspection body judging that the school has made the required progress.