Swale Academies Trust (SAT) has secured a second Ofsted Outstanding school, after Meopham was found Outstanding in January (published earlier this week). This makes KCC’s decision to block SAT from taking over the failed Holmesdale School for most of 2018 look even more shocking as the school blundered from bad to worse under its control during the year.
Meopham School had suffered from poor leadership for as long as I can remember, culminating in 2012 when it was placed in Special Measures. An ‘Anywhere but Meopham’ cry was regularly made to me by parents seeking advice on how to avoid the school. SAT took it over the following year. It has rapidly improved ever since, with a ‘Good’ Ofsted Report just two years later, followed by a Short Inspection last year. Meopham has been delivering excellent GCSE results for its pupils for the past three years, being the second and third best performing non-selective school in the county at Progress 8 and in the top seven for Attainment 8 in each year. Rightly it has now seen last year’s Short Inspection converted to Outstanding. Not surprisingly, it has become heavily oversubscribed with 224 first choices for its 140 places for September.
By contrast, after Holmesdale School was placed in Special Measures a year ago, the school and its pupils were disgracefully hung out to dry by Kent County Council. KCC refused to hand the management of the school over to SAT even though it had been selected as the Sponsoring School when Holmesdale was served with an Academy Order and left it devoid of proper support until grudgingly yielding it to SAT at the end of November.
As well as further details below, I also look at the performance of Swale Academies Trust in an attempt to see why KCC was so strongly opposed to them being involved with Holmesdale School.
Meopham School now has the additional advantage that it is housed in a completely new site, opened a year ago at a cost of £14 million. One of the skills of SAT appears to be its ability to use expertise to the full to attract capital funding for its schools.
Amongst other highlights: Pupils in key stages 3 and 4 make excellent progress across the curriculum. Standards in English, mathematics and science are particularly impressive; Teaching overall is inspirational, fuelling pupils’ desire to learn and to demonstrate their learning; A vivid sense of cooperation and purpose permeates the school; Pupils’ behaviour is exemplary. They demonstrate a joy in learning; Pupils are rightly proud of the inclusive culture of the school; Progress and attainment in the core subjects of English, mathematics and science is exceptionally strong across the school. Pupils with SEND make impressive progress from their starting points; Disadvantaged pupils make better progress overall than pupils in other schools due to the high-quality teaching and support that they receive.
The only issue identified is in the Sixth Form, where even so: The leadership of the sixth form is good and the requirements of the 16 to 19 study programmes are met in full. However, the curriculum offer is limited to a narrow selection of subjects, so it does not cater for all Meopham pupils who would like to stay into the sixth form. Leaders are acutely aware of this and trying hard to balance a good quality of provision with the economic challenges of small classes. Yes, indeed it is increasingly financially difficult to provide a viable Sixth Form curriculum for a small school.
Swale Academy Trust - Kent Schools - Ofsted Outcomes Pre-and Post Acquisition | ||||||
Status | Latest Ofsted | Date | Acquired by Trust | Prev Ofsted | Date | |
| Secondary | ||||||
| Holmesdale | Foundation | 11/2018 | Sp.M. | 2/18 | ||
| Meopham | Academy | Outst | 1/19 | 2013 | NTI | 2/12 |
| North | Community | Good | 9/17 | 2014 | Sp.M. | 12/13 |
| Sittingbourne | Academy | Good | 11/17 | 2012 | Satisf | 2/11 |
| Westlands | Academy | Outst | 1/12 | Longterm | Outst | 2/08 |
| Whitstable | Academy | Good | 2/17 | 2017 | R.I | 3/15 |
| Primary | ||||||
| Beaver Green | Academy | Good | 9/17 | 2014 | Sp.M. | 12/13 |
| Istead Rise | Academy | Good | 9/18 | 2017 | Sp.M. | 3/13 |
| Regis Manor | Academy | Good | 3/18 | 2011 | Good | 6/08 |
| SouthBorough | Academy | Good | 1/18 | 2015 | R.I | 10/12 |
| Westlands | Academy | Good | 5/15 | 2010 | Satisf | 3/09 |
| + 6 Sussex Schools and 1 nursery | ||||||
Notes: Outst -Outstanding; Sp.M - Special Measures; NTI - Notice to Improve (inadequate); Satisf - Satisfactory (predecessor to R.I. - Requires Improvement)
Along with the two Outstanding schools, the remaining nine to have been Inspected are all Good, building on five schools Inadequate (Special Measures, or Notice to Improve) under KCC control and four Requires Improvement (previously Satisfactory). Remarkably both of Westlands and Istead Rise primary schools have three Outstanding Categories out of the five in their Ofsted Assessment making them close to Outstanding overall, whilst Beaver Green has one. I have followed the dreadful fortunes of both Istead Rise and Beaver Green for many years with frequent mentions on this site. One article featuring Beaver Green, written in 2014, is particularly poignant. It lambasts KCC and its School Support 'services' which were heavily criticised in the third Monitoring Inspection after being placed into Special Measures. The difficulties at Istead Rise go way back before 2013 when was not only placed in Special Measures, but also failed its subsequent Monitoring Inspections, as I reported in an article which also heavily criticised KCC's failure to support schools in difficulty. It then fell under the control of the notorious Meopham Community School Federation where it continued to fail until being bailed out by SAT.