Ofsted Archive Documents

12th November 2009

Dear Parent / Carer,

OFSTED INSPECTION

As you may be aware the College was inspected by Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools Ofsted on the 17th and 18th of September 2009. This Inspection was carried out under a new framework introduced at the start of this school term. The purpose of this letter is to share the outcome of the inspection with you and to make you aware of what this means for Burleigh.

The inspection team identified many positive aspects of the college and recognised the benefits that the recently acquired Trust Status will bring in relation to our partnership work. A very important part of the process was to obtain the views of students, parents and carers, whom I am pleased to say, were very positive.

The new framework has quite rightly introduced some more stringent measures, some of which have ‘limiting judgements’. The outcomes of all these areas must be at least satisfactory in order to pass the inspection. During our inspection three areas, Safeguarding, Equal Opportunities and Attainment - all of which have limiting judgements, were judged to be inadequate and as a consequence the college’s overall effectiveness was judged to be inadequate and therefore we have been placed in ‘special measures’.

This means that the college has implemented an action plan to improve these areas and that we will be benefiting from regular visits from inspectors to report on progress.

A full copy of the report is enclosed however in summary findings relating to the three areas are as follows:

Safeguarding – Whilst acknowledging that students felt safe and that a very large majority of parents and carers felt that the school keeps students safe they found that the administrative process in the college did not fully comply with government requirements.

Equal Opportunities - Formal policies setting out how the college promotes and checks on equality issues and tackles differences in performance between boys and girls were not in place.

Attainment – Despite the improvements over the last few years the college needs to take more steps to raise attainment in English and Mathematics and to ensure that students continue to make better progress. The quality of lessons needs to be more consistent across the college and we need to increase the amount of good and outstanding lessons through staff training and the sharing of good ideas. We need to be able to demonstrate that leaders and governors are working more closely together to monitor all aspects of the college’s work so that improvement can be achieved more quickly.

In terms of the actions we are taking I am pleased to be able to report that we have already rectified the administrative error in relation to Safeguarding and we expect to have formalised our equal opportunities policies by the end of the term following a consultation period. The steps we are introducing to further improve teaching and learning will improve attainment and outcomes for students. Whilst we have up to two years to make the necessary improvements we are already working very hard to meet the standards as soon as possible.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the 342 parents and carers, who returned the Ofsted questionnaire during the inspection. This questionnaire had to be returned within one day of it being issued and therefore the return rate was very high and we think this reflects on how well parents and carers are engaged with the school. The full set of results relating to the responses given are shown on page 12 of the report. This shows that the very large majority of responses either agreed or strongly agreed with the question asked by Ofsted.

The Governors and Senior Leaders are very disappointed with the outcome of this inspection and in recognising and accepting responsibility for the situation are determined to work together along with support from the Local Authority to ensure that we make the necessary progress.

In accepting this responsibility we would like to invite parents and carers to attend a special meeting commencing at 7pm on Wednesday 18th November in the Main Hall where we will discuss the actions we are putting in place to address the judgements in the Ofsted report .

Representatives from the Local Authority will be present at this meeting which will replace the Parents’ Discussion Forum, scheduled for 6.30pm.

We have a big challenge ahead but I firmly believe that we have solid foundations to build on and that, along with your continued support, we will further improve the outcomes for our students.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs. C. M. Horsfall

School Principal

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