Troubled school celebrates as inspectors praise turnaround
ONE of Wales’ most troubled schools has been taken out of special measures after nearly three years.
Teachers at Eastern High in Cardiff were in tears when headteacher Armando Di-Finizio told them the good news.
“It is fantastic. We are all over the moon,” he said. “A tremendous amount of work has been done since day one when I walked into the school and wondered if it could stay open.”
Mr Di-Finizio was brought in temporarily in December 2014 when the executive head left after one of the worst inspections handed out by Estyn.
The school was found to be performing unsatisfactorily across every measure and was put under special measures in February 2015.
A report published yesterday, following a visit by Estyn inspectors earlier this month, says the school has made “strong progress” across five key areas, including literacy, numeracy and behaviour.
Most pupils now behave well in lessons and around the school and arrive promptly and ready to learn, the report adds.
Mr Di-Finizio, who decided to stay on at the school, said it has been rewarding and exciting to change its fortunes around.
This year, the 680-pupil school was one of only a few in Wales to improve its GCSE results. It also bucked the national trend by narrowing the achievement gap of pupils on free school meals, and attendance has risen from 85% to 92%.
Mr Di-Finizio praised staff, pupils and parents for their help.
In the past two years, 20 of the 50 staff have left and 20 new staff arrived, including a completely replaced senior leadership team.
Mr Di-Finizio said he and his team have found it rewarding transforming the school where 47% of pupils are eligible for free school meals.
“I came in to hold the fort for the last two weeks of term but stayed.
“Everybody has been watching us. It is hard to shake a reputation. The first thing to do is get the students on side. It’s their school. It was about respecting them and getting away from a shout culture.
“We stopped excluding kids. Sending them home doesn’t work. We went from hundreds of fixed-term exclusions a term to zero. People began, bit by bit, to believe.”
Help also came from improvement programme Schools Challenge Cymru, now closed by the Welsh Government, and teachers had extra training.
Results prove the plan is working, the head said. In 2015, only 14% of pupils achieved the gold-standard five GCSEs grade A* to C, including English and maths. In 2016, this rose to 25% and last summer to 32%. Although this is still low, it is a steady rise and the school is performing better than others with a similar profile, according to Mr Di-Finizio.
“I have got a really good team. We are a good school now, but you need to loosen up to be excellent. We had to tighten teaching and other things to be good and now teachers need to have the confidence to deviate because we need to lighten up to be excellent. We want to be an excellent school and I am so enthusiastic. I believe the system we have works.”
He admitted “it’s not perfect yet” and he is “tense” about the effect of coming out of special measures and the school moving into a new purpose-built building at the start of next term.
“You have to keep standards going. It will lift us and the whole community but you can’t be complacent,” he said.
He revealed how one inspector told him “it’s staggering what has been done” and his team has been asked to advise other schools.
Mel Ainscow, head of the now-disbanded Schools Challenge Cymru, said: “Thanks to the urgent actions that Schools Challenge Cymru pushed for, followed by bespoke support provided for a newly-arrived head, a rapid programme of root and branch reform was instigated. I hope that lessons from such experiences will be drawn on, as things move forward in Wales.”
Sarah Merry, Cardiff council’s cabinet member for education, employment and skills, said: “The findings of the latest inspection are testament to how well the staff, governors, local authority and the whole school community have worked together.”