Shock as school is told it must improve
ASECONDARY school once hailed for the quality of its teaching and standards of behaviour now ‘requires improvement’ Ofsted has found.
Oulder Hill Community College and Language School in Greave was rated ‘good’ in a glowing report from the education watchdog five years ago.
But now Ofsted say the school, which has about 1,300 pupils, ‘requires improvement’ in all five areas examined in a report published following its latest inspection last month.
Inspectors criticised teaching saying standards were ‘inconsistent’, adding: “Despite leadership’s best efforts, too much teaching does not enable all pupils to make good progress from their starting points.
“Some teachers do not have high enough expectations of what their pupils can achieve. Inspectors observed several lessons where levels of challenge for some pupils were not high enough. Teachers often miss opportunities to stretch and challenge pupils, or to deepen and consolidate their learning, for example through extended questioning.”
Pupils’ behaviour ‘when unsupervised outside lessons’ was also described as ‘variable’ and inspectors found several group of pupils, including disadvantaged youngsters were significantly underachieving.
The report said: “Most pupils behave well around school at breaks and lunchtimes, and when moving between lessons.
However, inspectors heard a lot of swearing.
Some pupils who met inspectors said that behaviour during the inspection was better than it is usually. Pupils drop a lot of litter.
“Pupils wear their uniform smartly and most are courteous and respectful.
“Most have positive attitudes to learning and their positive behaviour ensures that there is little disruption of learning. However, some pupils in some subjects are allowed to present poor-quality or unfinished work.”
Inspectors also found ‘too many pupils’ had been permanently excluded - at a rate several times higher than the national average - and that this ‘disproportionately affected’ disadvantaged and disabled children and those with special educational needs.
But Ofsted found the number of excluded pupils had fallen by 50 per cent since 2014, adding: “So far this academic year, however, no pupil has been permanently excluded, and the school has achieved a significant reduction in the numbers of pupils receiving a fixedterm exclusion.
“The headteacher has recently restructured leadership roles to give more weight to behaviour management.
“Leaders are also using the school’s internal support unit, ‘The Bridge’, to good effect to reduce the number of behavioural incidents.”
But the school was also praised in a number of areas.
Inspectors wrote: “Leaders are working hard to improve the quality of teaching and offer teachers frequent opportunities for development.
“In the great majority of lessons, pupils behave well and are willing to learn.
“The school is successfully improving its overall attendance rates, including for disadvantaged pupils.”
Headteacher John Watson said “we are obviously very disappointed by this judgment, especially as our examination results are above the national figures overall for both attainment and progress.
But there is much to be proud of in the report for example “the school has a strong programme designed to enhance pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development”. Safeguarding is also considered a strength of the school along with our attendance rates, NEETs figures and careers guidance. The report further states that “in the great majority of lessons pupils behave well and are willing to learn”.
It is reassuring that Oulder Hill is recognised as a safe and happy place for children to learn and grow.
Nevertheless, we do recognise that some of our disadvantaged children have performed significantly below their non-disadvantaged peers and Leaders will continue to “work tirelessly to improve teaching and learning” as the report notes we already do to iron out those inconsistencies”.
Chair of Governors Zak Al-Hassani added that he was pleased that the inspection team noted that “Governors hold senior leaders to account robustly” and that Oulder Hill pupils are typically “courteous, respectful and have positive attitudes to learning” and believes this is due to the high line on standards the school has. Oulder Hill will continue to have exacting standards even though this report says we have permanently excluded too many pupils.