Wesley Carroll, the fourth Principal of Folkestone Academy since it was taken over by Turner Schools in May 2017 is to stand down in January, reportedly for family reasons, having been appointed a year ago after extensive advertising to find an Executive Principal for the school failed to find a suitable candidate. He was previously Vice Principal for just over a year, a very limited senior experience for the post and will revert to this title where he will focus on the Year 11 GCSE group, presumably because there is no one else capable of this middle management task. The 2019 staff list on the school website, possibly in preparation for this shows him as Co-Principal, but there is no mention of who he is ‘co’ with!
He will be succeeded by Seamus Murphy, appointed six months ago as Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Turner Schools, with his salary paid for by the Department for Education for what appear to be invalid reasons. His appointment was announced as being designed to allow the CEO, Dr Jo Saxton, to concentrate on curriculum matters surely a position well away from the strategic role her title demands, although reports suggest she still keeps a tight control of events. What happens next to fill his role, or was it always unnecessary and just for short term expediency in the first place? As my previous article notes, with copious evidence: ‘Leadership at Turner Schools below the level of CEO has always appeared to present a major problem for this small Academy Trust’. Other senior leaders also change with alarming regularity.
Turner Schools is fond of the term 'Sea Change' to describe its 'mission' in Folkestone. The events described in this article suggest that 'Troubled Waters' may be a better description!
Mr Murphy’s appointment will take the count to five Principals in less than two years under Turner Schools control, suggesting serious failure by those appointing or else a complete lack of strategic thinking. You will find background on the previous four leaders here. Most recently, in September 2018 whilst there was just one Deputy Principal, the number has swollen to three Deputies this September, all with major responsibilities across the school. Mr Carroll, with his responsibility for Year 11, will expand this further to four, along with three Assistant Principals, another having left the school.
Given that Mr Murphy's salary was funded by the Department for Education for a year to carry out a specific role, presumably the school will not be able to claim back the last portion.
During Mr Carroll’s year in charge, he has brought the number of fixed term exclusions at the school down from the astronomical 1211 of 2017-18 to 534 in 2018-19, but which is still likely to see the school with the second highest exclusion rate in the county. He saw the newly appointed Consultant Executive Principal packing his bags after just a month, and 27 other teaching staff leaving the secondary section during the year, down from 54 in 2018, but still giving no indication of stability at the school. The school website boasted its strong interpretation of provisional 2019 GCSE results soon after these were sent to schools, their usual practice, but any mention of GCSE outcomes has now vanished, suggesting more disappointment to come. Instead you will find the following on the website; spot the dates:
For some reason, the Trust sent out a lengthy press release reporting this to local media and published as news in both the local newspapers and online here and here. It reports Mr Murphy writing about Mr Carroll ‘Wesley has been central to the good work I have seen at Folkestone Academy. He will remain an integral part of the senior leadership team at the school and I look forward to working with him on a daily basis’. Damning with faint praise indeed. It also includes yet another extensive biography of Mr Murphy, surely unnecessary for an internal appointment, unless the assurance to readers that he is an experienced headteacher carries a message! The sensitivity of this change is such that ‘The two educators have also released a video explaining the changes to parents and pupils, and posted it to social media’! Whilst an explanatory video is a unique approach to an internal change of headteacher, suggesting again that such a change needs justification, all this publicity certainly begs the question yet again of what is going at Turner Schools.