Last night the governing body of Highbury Grove secondary school (of which I am a member) gave its formal agreement to the building of completely new premises for the school, under the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. The school’s existing 1960s buildings are very much in need of replacement, and this means that by 2010 Highbury Grove’s pupils will have some amazing new facilities.

The school has made a huge amount of progress academically in recent years (earlier this year being judged ‘good’ by Ofsted, a remarkable turnaround) - and it’s great that its facilities will be catching up and giving pupils the best opportunities in future.

Getting governing body agreement is hardly the end of this process - with a huge construction programme to come over the next two years. But it’s great to know that it will now definitely be happening!

Last night was a good night for Highbury Grove school!

In the first part of the evening we had a very useful meeting about the latest plans for the school to be replaced under the Building Schools for the Future programme. At the end of this month we have an important meeting to make the final decision as the governing body to proceed with the project, so it’s good to see that so much work on all the details is going in, by the people at the school, CEA and the Council.

And then later in the evening the relevant Council planning sub-committee agreed to give planning permission for the new buildings. The new school will be completely new buildings, built on the same site but around the existing ones (which will then be demolished). It is a huge building project so this was a crucial step.

Roll on the new school!

I was delighted to discover that the good work of Highbury Grove Secondary School (where I’m a governor) is highlighted in today’s Independent. Highbury Grove has faced a lot of challenges over the years, but earlier this year was judged by Ofsted to be a ‘good’ school, which is a great turnaround.

About four years ago, Emma sat on a Lib Dem party policy working group on early years. One of the issues they identified was the need to raise the quality of training for early years staff, which has a big impact on the benefit to young children. As a way of doing of this they proposed introducing a national register and status for leaders in early years, equivalent to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) for teaching primary and secondary-aged children.

Read the rest of this entry »

I knew that the old days of teachers having to spend months preparing for an Ofsted inspection were gone, to be replaced by a ‘light touch’ inspection at short notice. That seemed very sensible - the effort required just to prepare for the inspection did seem to be rather disproportional to actually teaching.

I got a taste of this in January, when at the governors meeting at Highbury Grove Secondary School, I asked when we were expecting Ofsted again and were told it could be any time now. Within 36 hours they had rung up to say they were coming now, they came two days later, and within a week of me asking the question it was all over. (The school was graded ‘good’ - an amazing success for a school that has made huge strides forward over the last few years.)

But that was nothing to Ofsted Early Years (a different set up to Ofsted, though with the same basic purpose in life), who turned up on the doorstep at Emma’s school and nursery this morning, announcing they were going to conduct an inspection at that very minute. They seem to have spent the day looking around there, but by the early afternoon they had gone again, off to write their report. Apparently they actually get training in how to respond to nurseries’ reaction to them (ie shock!).

Since one of the major complaints of the previous system was that teachers had to spend many months worrying about and preparing for the inspection, I can see some sense in this - but which of the rest of us face a knock on the door at any minute and the announcement of an instant inspection by outsiders - leading to a report which will be taken as the judgement on us by the rest of the world for the next three years?