Education Focus - The chaos at The Deanery
"They are failing our children"
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This is the fourth of our monthly ‘Education focus’ editions which will normally appear on the second Thursday of every month. The first Thursday is ‘Business’, and the third Thursday of the month is ‘Heritage’, and the final Thursday is ‘Food & Drink’.
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The catastrophic failure of Swindon’s newest secondary school
To much fanfare back in 2019, The Deanery CofE Academy in Wichelstowe opened its doors for its first batch of pupils. Before the opening new Head Teacher Linda Culling said: “The innovative and challenging curriculum will nurture confident, secure, imaginative and selfless students. At the same time, the school will become the heart of the new community of Wichelstowe.”
Fast forward four years, and four head teachers later, and the school has just received a damning ‘inadequate’ Ofsted report saying it should be put into special measures and that ‘'this school requires special measures because it is failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education and the persons responsible for leading, managing or governing the school are not demonstrating the capacity to secure the necessary improvement in the school.'
By Jamie Hill
Things haven’t been going well at Swindon’s newest secondary school..
According to a parent, who wishes to remain anonymous, the Ofsted inspection was triggered after parent groups got together en masse to fill in the Parentview section of Ofsted’s website. Out of 724 children on the roll at The Deanery, 230 complaints were sent to Ofsted.
One of the most telling findings from the Parentview portal that the parents filled in is that 70% of the parents would not recommend the school to another parent.
This came after a litany of problems at the start of the school year in September with the parents claiming -
Major safeguarding issues
Lack of timetables for students for the first few weeks
Year 7s, who had only just started at the school, not given a tutor group and just left in the canteen
Teachers not being given class lists - essentially not knowing which pupils were in each class
Teachers ignoring fights between pupils
Despite being emailed and called by The Ink there has been no official response from the school yet as to how they will be addressing the findings of the Ofsted inspection, which was carried out on 12 and 13 September.