Redby Primary Academy Sunderland - badly spinning plates

How long, can this keep goin on?  

Redby Primary Academy, Sunderland has been in special measures since November 2013 and shows no signs that it will ever get to be a good school, despite the bold claims on its vacancy adverts to be "on the road to outstanding".  Successive HMI visits claim that the academy is making reasonable progress, but show that as soon as one inadequacy appears to be fixed, another one arises, and then a previous inadequacy resurfaces.  It's Groundhog Day, spinning plates badly, going round in circles, or in military terms - Situation Normal All Fucked Up.


They instigated capability procedures in January 2014 against a number of teachers.  The procedure was not carried out correctly and there were no grounds whatsoever for invoking the capability procedure in respect of those teachers whom the academy had always rated as good.

But, the bullying, intimidating and fast-track approach to this process forced two teachers to leave immediately and they were each given a severance payment with strings attached - they could not talk about their leaving the academy (this was inadvertently revealed by a union rep when advising another teacher who was facing capabilities). 

This was way too easy.  This business of getting rid of inadequate teachers, as a governor had called them at a parent's meeting, was as easy as waving a big stick (you will never teach again if you fail the capability process) and dangling a carrot  - a few months pay in lieu of notice.  Of course, it is actually illegal (under the Education Act, Governors Regulations) to pay a teacher a settlement to persuade them to leave, if you truly consider that teacher to be inadequate i.e. the law states that if you have grounds for dismissal, no payment is necessary and the dismissal procedure must be followed.  THIS MEANS THAT THE ACADEMY HAD NO GROUNDS FOR DISMISSING TEACHERS ON GROUNDS OF CAPABILITY! It still hasn't.

As I said, it was too easy for them.  So they decided to target a few more teachers, again they had no grounds at all for doing so, and they knew they weren't following the procedure either, 

Why? because Ofsted had put the school in special measures, blaming the leadership for the fall in standards, so the leadership needed scapegoats for their failings.  The former head teacher got the blame for everything so she was pushed out, but that wasn't enough. They had to go after the teachers rather than addressing the inadequacies of the senior leadership team and the middle leaders of the school.  Unfair, inconsistent capability processes were instigated against teachers, in order to raise standards, rather than training and observations of good practice.

I wonder when the governing body or Ofsted will do the math and realise why the school has remained in special measures for 14 months  whereas other schools in the local area have managed to get out of special measures within 3 - 6 months.  

I'll 'do the math' for them.  The Acting Head responsible for getting the school out of special measures is the same person as the Deputy Head who presided over the school's decline over the three years from the last "good" Ofsted report.  Specifically, the deputy head was responsible for exactly those areas of weakness identified by Ofsted in their 2013 report: 

• Monitoring and evaluation activities are not regular or robust enough to give the academy a clear picture of the most significant weaknesses.
• The skills and expertise of other senior leaders are underused. They have not been directed to investigate weaknesses in mathematics or the inadequate provision in the Nursery. Nor have the deputy headteacher and assistant headteacher been assigned to oversee the work of middle leaders and support them to make improvements. 
• There has been too little monitoring and evaluation of teaching since the academy opened for the academy to bring about consistency and move the quality to good. A number of staff expressed a need for training in specific aspects of their work to help them improve, but said that training opportunities were not regular or tailored to their needs. The academy should not seek to appoint newly qualified teachers
• Performance management systems rely too heavily on data about pupils’ progress that is supplied by teachers. The headteacher has not established robust systems to check on the accuracy of these assessments and staff have had little training in this aspect of their work.

Yes, ultimately the former Head Teacher has to carry the can, but it looks like she was royally stitched up by the Deputy Head and the Assistant Head (the current Acting head teacher and acting deputy head teacher).  They certainly pulled the wool over the eyes of Ofsted:

The skills and expertise of other senior leaders are underused. They have not been directed to investigate weaknesses in mathematics or the inadequate provision in the Nursery. Nor have the deputy headteacher and assistant headteacher been assigned to oversee the work of middle leaders and support them to make improvements. 

Have Ofsted not heard of using initiative commensurate with seniority?

It now becomes clear as to why the current Acting headteacher was at pains to request that everyone pulled together when Ofsted were last in - was she judging everyone else by her own standards and expecting them to blow the whistle on her performance, like she did?   Well she was wrong.  Teachers don't need to be told to pull together - they just do it.  They have scruples.  They have loyalty to their school.  They pull out all the stops when Ofsted or HMI come in to the school.



NINE full-time permanent teachers and at least as many supply teachers have left the Academy in the last year.   Some have left teaching altogether, some went on to do supply teaching, others left for temporary teaching appointments elsewhere.  Only one teacher has left to go to a full time permanent teaching post.   

So they have got rid of the "historically weak" teachers, but the Redby primary academy remains in special measures after 14 months.  How can that be? If they have eradicated the weak teaching through robust support and high expectations - why are they still shit?