HEADLINES 20th January 2023
By James SaundersHAPPY FRIDAY
Happy Friday everyone. It gives me great pleasure to share our Ofsted report with you https://bit.ly/ HonywoodOfstedReport. You will be aware that we had an inspection in December which, at the time, I had indicated had gone well. This is our first inspection under the new Ofsted framework and my first one since joining Honywood almost five years ago and embarking on our improvement journey.
Whilst we have never done things to satisfy Ofsted or jumped onto the latest Ofsted bandwagon, it is nice to have up to date confirmation at a national level that we are providing a great education for the children within our community. I know that you can never please everyone all of the time, so hopefully these comments will reassure everyone, most importantly our learners and their families, that we are doing the right things for the right reasons.
Ofsted visits are very different to how they used to be and from my perspective, a lot better. They tend to keep the Headteacher at arm’s length; I do not get involved in many of the activities so that the evidence they collect is impartial. The process begins by me and my Leadership Team telling them all about our community and what I think they will see in school. They then watch lots of lessons and talk to lots of children and staff to see if what was said was right. Parents will have provided feedback via Parentview and learners through another survey.
I like this format as it is more genuine and transparent. Inspections of old provided opportunities to play the game and dazzle inspectors with a plethora of colourful charts and data to prove a point or engineer a judgement. I had no worries about the new process or my involvement in it as I had the utmost trust in our learners, our teachers, our parents and our community. My trust was well placed as the feedback I received was excellent.
We are, of course, very pleased with our judgement of a Good overall and in all categories. We entered the process wanting to achieve a solid ‘good’. We knew we had not finished our journey and there was still work to do. However, at the end of the first day, after the lead inspector said to me ‘you have nothing to worry about’, he then said that ‘for more than one area we could be looking at the Outstanding category’. Mr Munro and I both spent the evening exchanging emails discussing where we thought he was referring to based on the activities he had completed. We came to the conclusion that, based on the feedback we had received from the team, they were suggesting that behaviour, personal development and leadership could all potentially achieve the Outstanding grade.
What the report does not tell you is how close we came to an ‘outstanding’ grading. For me, I was rooting for personal development as that area really captures what we are all about at Honywood and what the school means to me personally. During day two, the lead inspector sat down with me to take me through the Parentview and learner feedback and at one point I had a tear in my eye - as did the inspector. He was going through the comments left and percentages of responses from parents and learners. He ensured that the activities the inspection team completed explored the issues raised by parents so he could satisfy himself that these areas were as they should be. Safeguarding in particular was scrutinised to a high level, as is always a priority in any inspection, and the feedback was that we have an excellent approach to monitoring, recording and dealing with safeguarding matters.
As he flew through the statistics I was frantically scribbling them down. He then paused at one particular question that learners had responded to…. He said he had never seen this before in his many years of inspecting schools. It was the response to the question ‘my school encourages me to respect learners from other backgrounds and to treat everyone
equally’. 100% of learners responded positively to this question. That filled me with a warm glow.
The inspection framework is incredibly rigorous. Every single bullet point must be achieved in full to meet the Outstanding grade. Two things held us back and formed the basis of the targets that we received. The first is attendance. Too many of our learners are not meeting the national targets for attendance. We appreciate that there is much nuance in this issue post pandemic and we are doing our best to bridge the gap left by social care regarding mental health support, but the message is clear - children are expected to attend school. Had this been better, then behaviour and personal development would have been Outstanding. Inspectors were so complementary about the climate around school and the conduct of our learners - they did not see one thing out of place during their time in our school which they confirmed is quite rare for them. They really did understand how we balance our traditional approach to standards and expectations with a progressive approach to learning and a culture of trust, respect, equity and excellence. It was lovely to see our inclusive nature recognised along with the environment we have created that allows for all children, including those with special education needs and disabilities, to thrive.
The other noteworthy area for us to develop is reading. You will be aware that we have had a push on this recently and have reinstated our library. We recognise that we are at the start of this journey as did the inspection team. Reading is and always has been a key to unlock knowledge, opportunity, progress and success. At home you can support us by encouraging your children to read more. Still, too many children arrive at secondary school unable to read properly.
Why encourage your reluctant reader?
1 in 6 adults in England struggle to read.
15.9% of all 16 to 24 year-olds are not in education, employment or training; Literacy is a big factor in this.
10 to 16 year-olds who read for pleasure, do better at school.
Reading books is the only out-of-school activity for 16-year-olds demonstrably linked to securing managerial or professional jobs.
There is overwhelming evidence that reading and understanding texts has a significant relationship to people’s life chances, and can even extend their life.
Within Cohorts, we are currently reading the following books:
C7 - Wonder
C8 - Book Thief
C9 - The Fault in our Stars
C10 - Fahrenheit 451
C11 - 1984
I highlight both these target areas as we can’t tackle them alone. We all have a collective responsibility to support the children in our community to attend school and we all have a collective responsibility to encourage a love of reading. We appreciate the challenges that exist in the current climate but ask that parents and carers work with us to get children into school so that they can continue to receive the support needed to achieve well and develop their literacy and life skills as well as their academic ones. So what’s next for us? Well, we will continue with our journey and our mission to be the beating heart of the community and to develop well rounded learners through our values and capitals so that they leave as happy and successful individuals with the confidence to tackle any challenge that life throws at them. If we continue to work together on our improvement journey then, as the inspection team stated before they departed, we could be in a position to be judged Outstanding the next time they visit.
I wish you all and lovely weekend
James Saunders
Well done to our C9 Netball team who played Brentwood Ursuline Convent High School this week in the Essex Plate competition. They won 27-2! They are now through to the quarter finals. Well done!
The latest addition to our library! With massive thanks to our former learner Joshua Hickford who sent us a copy of his novel which has been released on Amazon this week! So very proud of his achievement. Josh left Honywood in 2017 and moved on to the Colchester Sixth Form. From there, he studied History at Queen Mary's University London and is now studying his Masters in Military History at Oxford. What a journey! And he found time to write a novel! Congratulations Josh on the publication of Retracting Claws!
We are incredibly proud of Mr Scott, Cohort Leader and PE teacher, who has signed up to face an unbelievable challenge, an Ultramarathon to raise money for the Tom Bowdidge Foundation. The marathon takes place in June and is 100km - non stop! What a challenge! The Foundation raises money to support teenagers and young adults with cancer. We wish Mr Scott the very best of luck with his training and the challenge.
If you would like to find out more, and support Mr Scott by donating, please see the links below. To donate… https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/daniel-scott07 My Insta Page https://instagram.com/dannyscottultratraining?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= The Charity https://www.tombowdidgefoundation.org
