I have written a number of times previously about the dreadful period when Ebbsfleet Academy was led by Alison Colwell. The previous occasion was back in April, about a book she has written, to be published under the title ‘The Secret Headteacher’ early next year, although there was little secret as her name was given openly in a Publisher’s blurb at the time.
My article demonstrated clearly that most of the claims made about the book are completely false, but this did not stop The Sunday Times repeating these two weeks ago, in its second plug for the book. This begins: ‘It has the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster - a story about a failing school where the unsupervised children of angry parents roam the corridors, only for a new head teacher to take the place by the scruff of its neck and mould it into a model academy’. Absolute rubbish!
Just before she left Ebbsfleet, Ms Colwell chose to make an astonishing attack on the parents of a school where she had, according to the advertising blurb, ‘spent seven wonderful years’, which I examined in another article entitled ‘Ebbsfleet Academy: Parents rubbished by departing Principal’ demolishing yet more claims. She has now moved on to run the small private Baleares International College, Sa Porrassa, on the island of Mallorca. I look at all these issues, including how she is getting on in her new school, below.
The ST article continues its introduction: ‘A new book describing the harsh realities of under-performing schools in Britain presents what its author summed up in a pitch as "the challenges and sadness of looking after children, the astonishing troubles they experience... tales of poor (and great) parenting... drugs, violence, addiction, alcohol, crime ... astonishing and inspiring teachers". So little left out there, although not one of the multiple incidents reported in the article indicates any element of this scale of devastation, unknown in the District. Indeed the large majority of incidents feature parents unable to cope with Ms Colwell’s uncompromising and confrontational style in verbal exchanges. Is ‘Hauled up in front of the head to tackle their child's bad behaviour and swearing, another parent tells his daughter to "shut the f*** up" really worth quoting in the ST. Apparently, it is all down to: ‘Colwell, familiar with acronyms such as ADHD and ADD, has come up with a different acronym to describe some of the family reactions she has witnessed - "PPP, or p*ss-poor parenting"’. It doesn’t take much more of this sort of thing in the many chosen quotations to see the contempt in which 'white and working class’ parents are held, underlined by the frightful: 'Families were fined for taking children out of school if their parents wanted a cheap package holiday', quoted as another demonstration of her tough discipline. Elsewhere in the county families deliberately flout the rules and pay the fine to take their children to Disneyland! ‘I once tried to tell a mother she was a bad parent. I got shouted at and sworn at even more. It was not a strategy I tried again" Just the once – wow! The good news is that under a new headteacher, with good experience, the school has settled down and is reported to be a much happier place, with not a single complaint coming my way over the past 15 months, and families no longer trying to move their children out to other schools or opting for Home Education.
Since Ms Colwell joined the school in September 2019, over a third of the secondary staff have left in just over a year, including four months when the school was closed during lockdown. These included the Heads of the Secondary section, of the Sixth Form and of English. Other teachers are reported to be looking for new posts elsewhere. Coincidentally, a third of the Ebbsfleet Academy staff left the school during her final year there. Staff describe her style as rule by announcement, together with divide and conquer strategy, reminiscent of the approach at Ebbsfleet.
A number of parents have withdrawn their children from the school, some reportedly to set up a Home Education Group (shades of Ebbsfleet), although new pupils are being accepted into Years 10 and 11 to fill vacancies. She has imported the ‘tough love’ principles that created such problems at Ebbsfleet into what could be called a ‘cosy’ small private school, where they are seen as highly inappropriate. She is fond of quoting as a model the style of a friend who runs Michaela Academy, a new Free School in Brent, with a reputation as ‘Britain’s Strictest School’, although the catchments of the two are of entirely different natures. One of a number of standing jokes in the school is the newly painted line down the middle of a secondary section corridor requiring pupils in a one-way system to keep to their own side; this in a small school which has very little disciplinary need. The need for constant change includes regular timetable rewrites, as Ms Colwell seeks to change the culture.
