TROUBLE HITS THE SUTHERLAND BUSINESS AND ENTERPRISECOLLEGE-------- AGAIN !!!
The Sutherland Business and EnterpriseCollege in Trench Telford was recently found to be providing an INADEQUATE standard of education for over 500 pupils in a recent OFSTED Inspection. The school was also issued with a notice to improve and OFSTED have confirmed that the school is classed as a CONCERN.
The Chair of Governors Councillor Keith Austin also decided to only issue parents with page 13 of a 14 page reportwhich is a breach of their legal requirements.
Students at the college are now starting a petition at the school because they are concerned at the standard of education being offered to them with a great concern being on the subject of English.
Approximately 12 months ago an English teacher left the school on compassionate grounds, but unfortunately, at least 30 pupils were then not adequately taught in this subject.
Over the last 12 months, students saw at least 10 different teachers drift in and out of the classroom and not one teacher carried on teaching where the other left off.
Over the course of this 12 months, students work went unmarked, coursework was not checked and a number of students coursework has now been lost at the school by one of the many teachers that drifted in and out of the classroom.
Students today said,
“The last year has been extremely unsettling for us. We never had a regular teacher, we were often left to our own devices and had to regularly go to the offices to find out if we had a teacher to teach us”
“Our final examinations in English start next week, now we have the additional burden of having to complete a years worth of coursework and get it marked before our examinations start”
“I am one of the fortunate few who have backed up all my coursework on a memory stick, but other students are not that lucky”
“We do not need this kind of pressure this close to our examinations. Some teachers have no problem in suspending children for minor issues, but teachers are allowed to get away with providing a poor level of education and get away with it”
A parent of pupils at the school said today,
“I have grave concerns about what is happening at this school, my concerns have been expressed to the Head Teacher and the Deputy Head in writing but they refuse to sort out parents concerns adequately”
“I have a meeting with the Head Teacher next week, if my concerns are not addressed adequately, I will have no alternative but to go to the Local Authority and the issues raised could then be forwarded to the Government Ombudsman”
“I have spoken with pupils who are very concerned and would urge every parent who has a child at this school to raise concerns with the Head Teacher immediately.”
“It is not appropriate that children are not being taught to the required standards and it is not acceptable that children’s coursework is lost or at best unmarked this close to their final examinations”
“The school is playing Russian roulette with our children’s education, some of whom have special educational needs and someone must be held to account”
“I note that the Council and Chair of governors remained very quiet when the results of the OFSTED Inspection were released in the Shropshire Star, this is not acceptable and education in the borough has had no effective leadership since the departure of Christine Davies”
The school and the local Authority have a duty of care to our future generations, this is certainly not being implemented at the moment and the current year 11’s at this school are likely to produce the worst set of results this school has seen for sometime, yet the school is not bothered.
SUTHERLAND BUSINESS AND ENTERPRISECOLLEGE IS FAILING TO PROVIDE ADEQUATE EDUCATION.
Every school has a wide range of legal requirements to abide by, one of these legal requirements is to ensure that every parent, guardian, carer of a child at any school receive a copy of an OFSTED report 5 days after they receive the report.
Unfortunately, the Sutherland Business and Enterprise College in Trench has consistently FAILED to meet with this legal requirement.
It is common practice for this school and I suspect other schools do the same, to only issue a brief of the full report. this allows schools to hide the full content of the report and the findings of the HM Inspector who carried the inspection.
The nature of the school communication to parents often places the onus for improving on the pupil or their parent, guardian, carer and allows the school to hide the truth.
SUTHERLAND BUSINESS AND ENTERPRISE COLLEGE was inspected by OFSTED from 30th September 2009 – 1st October2009, the report issued by Inspectors is damming and the school is failing, this school has narrowly escaped being placed on special measures despite having had plenty of tax payers money spent on material aspects at this establishment.
A letter sent to a family who have children at the school from OFSTED dated 16th November 2009 states,
“Sutherland Business and EnterpriseCollege was placed into a category of concern and issued with a notice to improve”
“As a parent of a child at the school, the school should have provided you with a copy of the inspection report”
OFSTED have confirmed that the school received a copy of the Inspection report prior to the 16th November 2009, yet the school regularly denied having it and the Head teacher refused to release a copy of a report parents have a legal right to receive.
Councillor Keith Austin who fulfils a role as Chair of Governors issued a covering letter and page 13 of the report which was received by parents around the 22nd November, but the school continued to deny having the OFSTED Inspection report.
This is a clear case of politics interfering with education and truth.
WE NOW HAVE THE REPORT and I can now understand why the Sutherland Business and EnterpriseCollege do not want parents to see it. The school has always held parents and pupils to account but systematically fails to provide adequate education for its pupils.
INSPECTION GRADES
1 = Outstanding2 = Is good3 = is satisfactory4 = is inadequate
Every parentnow has a right to be extremely concerned at the standard of education at this school as Inspectors have given the school a grade of 4, stating
Overall Effectiveness: How Good is the school.4
Comments made by Inspectors Include
“Inspectors judged teaching and learning to be inadequate because too many lessons are still barely satisfactory or inadequate”
“Weaknesses in teaching are responsible for the low achievement and are a major reason why behaviour is adequate”
Outcomes for individuals and groups of pupils4
Comments from Inspectors include
“Behaviour is not consistently well managed and there is little reference to an agreed code of conduct”
“Feed back to students in inconsistent, with little evidence in most students’ books that they are receiving the diagnostic feedback they need to learn”
“the ‘John Hunt’ programme provides a suitable short-term alternative to lessons and help minimise exclusions although not enough action is taken to improve behaviour.”
The leadership and management of teaching and learning4
The quality of teaching4
The effectiveness with which the school deploys resources to achieve value for money4
Action taken by the school directly after Inspectors left
The school management responded poorly to Inspection and within a period of approximately 10 school days had excluded over 80 pupils for a fixed term.
Parents, guardians and carers were never informed that a harsh line was going to be taken with pupils in what has been called “a knee jerk reaction” to the inspection.
The school has been asked about these exclusions but have ignored written requests, this allows us to assume this was correct, especially as the figure of 88 exclusions was mentioned by a teacher to parents.
Communication with Parents, Guardians, Carers
The school has again been told that it is not doing enough to communicate with parents, guardians and carers and involve them to an adequate level with the school or their children’s progress.
This is not a new concern, it has been mentioned in previous OFSTED reports, mentioned to school management, yet they continue to to perform to the same low level.
Being Held To Account
The Sutherland Business and Enterprise College is a master at holding parents and students to account to any failing, no matter how minor the offence or incident maybe, yet when it comes to dealing with Poor Teaching practices they cover it up.
this is a school, like many others, that are more interested in League tables rather than providing a high quality of teaching.
School Rules and Policy
Rules and policy are often introduced at the drop of a hat. Although every pupil has a log book which includes various rules, they are not an accurate reflection on the rules or policy the school often refers to.
Other failings –
A pupil can be excluded for the most minor of issues, yet the school has never tackled the problem of bullying, this being an issue throughout the borough as identified by MP Mark Pritchard.
One process of the exclusion process is for the pupil and their parents to meet with the management prior to their return back to school.
Unfortunately, it is common place for teachers not to return parents calls when they request a meeting or when a meeting is arranged, the parents and pupil attend the school, but NO member is in attendance, therefore nothing is ever resolved.
School rules are never applied evenly across the board to all pupils, this causes confusion and sends out very mixed messages to pupils and parents.
ISSUES RAISED
When raising concerns with the school, it has to be done in writing so the parent can display that they have tried everything to action any issue. The school is very reluctant to reply to any concern, becomes extremely defensive often blaming the pupil or parent and does not place any communication of the file of the relevant pupil (s). Yet they keep attendance records and quote policy, but will not action their own failings.
A wide range of issues have been raised by parents with school management and adequate time has been allowed for them to give a comprehensive response.
However, these concerns will be raised OFSTED, the Local Authority and it could see a complaint being made to the Government Ombudsman.
The school is failing the pupils and tried to keep the OFSTED report as an in house document and has still failed to ensure that every parent not only knows of its existence, but also has access to it and give feedback with their concerns or even offer support.
I know I said 12:00pm on Wednesday, but I got bored waiting for you all ;) Its been a funny sort of week for Telford and Wrekin Council Watch, one that will go down in the history of the site as "Amusing, but a little bit of a council job" ..... on Sunday evening people managed to access the
Administration area of the site using a known vulnerability in one of the plugins that is used here - the plugin has now been removed. The most amusing thing was that they left subtle hints like "SHOULD USE APACHE", "DONT USE WINDOWS" and the all time favourite amongst script kiddie hackers "0wned" - oh how I laughed when I read them - more so that as they had access to the Administration area, they would have known if they had looked around that they were on an Apache Linux server to begin with - I wont ask if the council have outsourced their hacking department to another company mainly due to the fact that this is the type of job I would have expected from the council itself, shoddy, irresponsible and downright sad.
We know who did the misdeed and have their IP address, and all commands issued from their computer, strangely enough it comes from a computer system that accessess the site with alarming regularity, maybe a fan, maybe a pilchard - who knows ;) I WILL be doing something about it - the Computer Misuse Act carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison - I aim to go through to the hilt with this. Whoever did this is lonely, oh so lonely, maybe they have nobody for their own - sorry I am getting carried away here :) but naming names in the public realm isnt what this site is going to do.
Suffice to say I have heard the same name mentioned twice from different sources - can anyone say dirty politics, do the politicians in Telford actually have a spine or a pair of balls? They seem to not to be competent to do their own dirty work, but prefer to get others to do it for them. Transforming Telford? Into what? A shit tip of inept councillors who are unable to think clearly for themselves or act outside of the box - Andrew Eade should be well ashamed of himself, sitting in my house a few years ago saying to me that he thought TWCW was a good idea and that he supported it and would openly talk to all of the electorate - arrogance or what - then again what do we xpect from someone who looks like Moe Szyslak - the bartender from The Simpsons - wasnt Moe actually a letch as well as underhanded and doing backroom deals behind closed doors? Nuff said in my opinion.
Some of you know, that John Franklyn is ill at this present time and not able to do as much as he would like with the site - to kick a man when he is down like that is nothing short of disgusting and cowardly, showing none of the compassion that he has shown others - even councillors. At this present time I have decided to step upto the bat and take on the running of the site temporarily until John is back on his feet and able to ensure that Telford and Wrekin Council Watch continues to be a success. I am sure you all wish John your best and hope he gets better soon - hes an amazing guy and I was lucky to have him as the Best Man at my wedding :)
To this end a management team is being setup to take on parts of the site and areas within it, and to also ensure that content remains relevant, useful and entertaining - newsfeeds from other sites will also be encompassed as well. This is mainly due to the fact that I have a full time job and family, and cannot give the site 12 hours a day as it demands, and mainly because the sites so big (it runs to something like 10,000+ pages and at least 1,500 additional file attachments) I need another pair of hands.
We are back, we are not going to be silenced, and I hope for one thing the council are taking note - its time to kick ass - I hope they have big shoes on.
Telford Housing Report Update
