Bad marks from Ofsted as 130 schools fail to improve

With discipline and high expectations, we’ve achieved excellence in one of Britain’s poorest areas

UP TO 130 schools have shown no improvement for the past decade, an Ofsted report has found.

Amanda Spielman, the education watchdog’s chief inspector, warned that pupils from deprived backgrounds should not be used as an excuse for chronically under-achieving schools.

She spoke of her “frustration” with a culture in some parts of the country, where schools appear to compete with each another on the number of underprivileged pupils they cater for.

Speaking at the launch of Ofsted’s annual report yesterday, she said: “A few years ago, you couldn’t go into a school without being told the number of home languages spoken by pupils. Now, it often seems that school leaders are constantly comparing notes about how high their pupil premium or SEND (special educational needs and/or disability) rates are.

“Even more depressing, we still hear things like, ‘If you met my pupils’ parents, you’d understand why results are as they are’.”

Ofsted’s annual report found around 80 primary and 50 secondary schools have not recorded a good inspection in the past 10 years, despite “considerable attention and investment”.

Similar characteristics of these schools are a high staff turnover and unstable leadership. Many had higher than average proportions of white British pupils from low-income backgrounds, and pupils with special needs.

Around 80 per cent had high proportions of pupils from deprived areas, the report said. “It isn’t that there aren’t many children facing disadvantage and difficulties: they are there in all our schools, and more in some schools than others,” Ms Spielman said.

Head teachers know all about excuses. From “the dog ate my homework” to “I’m allergic to maths”, we’ve heard them all, and they’re always most unwelcome.

So I concur with Ofsted’s Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman, who says disadvantaged children cannot be used as an excuse for consistently underperforming schools. Of course, schools serving deprived areas face great challenges, but no kid goes to school to fail. I’ve yet to meet a student who doesn’t want to do well in life.

Newham, the East London borough where I grew up and now run a sixth form academy, might be a povertystricken area, but there’s no poverty of ambition. We encourage our students to aim high: we want to compete with Eton and Harrow, and I don’t see why we can’t match their achievements. This summer, after our second year’s A-level results, 190 of our 200 students were offered places at Russell Group universities, including nine offers from Oxbridge and one from MIT in the US.

My parents were migrants, with no formal education, and I attended the local comprehensive. While every child’s circumstances are different, I imagine it helps our pupils to know I was in a very similar situation to them when I attended school.

When I went to university and then to work in a City law firm, I often reflected on why many of my school peers didn’t achieve like I did. One important reason is that there are often low expectations of young people from deprived areas. If we set the bar low, it means pupils – and teachers, and parents – don’t bother to try; and no one is surprised when the result, at the end of it all, is mediocrity. Conversely, if we pitch to the top, and develop strong, nurturing relationships with our students, we instil a sense of ambition, and once it catches on across the school it’s very hard to swim against the tide.

At my school, at the start of the year we take every student to visit Cambridge – regardless of their current grade predictions. You should never underestimate. We encourage them to think about being prime minister, supreme court judges, lawyers and doctors; we send them on work placements to international law firms here and overseas, and host guest speakers as august as former governors of the Bank of England.

Head teachers must not be afraid to change the status quo. I am often bemused by initiatives that continue to be used in schools without any real analysis of what impact they are having. In a business environment, profit is always at the forefront; head teachers and education policymakers should, in the same way, be concentrated on getting a return for their investment – their investment being teachers’ time.

Our strategies for discipline include a strict uniform policy – rare among sixth-form colleges – and no free periods, with everyone in private, supervised study instead. We set a minimum of three hours homework in the evenings and five hours a day on the weekends. If pupils aren’t putting in the effort, they are hauled in and our expectations are made clear to them and their parents. Exclusions should be used as a last resort, but if behaviour is disrupting the rest of the class I believe they should be at a head teacher’s disposal, with the child then being supported to reintegrate into school.

But once you develop relationships with young people, and they know you care about them, you’re less likely to need to resort to such measures.

We have a 98 per cent attendance rate, which may have something to do with the fact that if students call in sick, I sometimes turn up on their doorstep to drive them into school. Like I said, no excuses.

Some blame poor standards on lack of investment, and it’s right to draw attention to the fact there’s a teacher recruitment crisis and a real term cut in funding. We need more of an incentive to drive high quality graduates to consider teaching, and to drive teachers to become head teachers. Heads who are parachuted in should be encouraged to stay for the long term, without the fear of being sacked within a year if the school isn’t doing well enough.

The things I am advocating – leadership, vision, values and culture – are about more than money. It’s no good blaming a lack of resources, or deprivation among your kids, if you haven’t got those things right.

Mouhssin Ismail is head teacher of Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre