Both inspectors were startled by the effect of our discipline policy. All the pupils they questioned in classrooms and on the corridors k...

There was no need for an inspector to tell us which way the wind was blowing. By June, anyone could have seen, heard and even smelt the i...

In most schools, there will be a handful of teachers who know how to get the best out of pupils with acute reading and spelling issues. T...

SEN provision had imploded well before Ofsted put Eydon Vale into Special Measures. Yet the Inspectors had shown little interest. In thei...

“How far does Ofsted expect a school like Eydon Vale to come in just one term?” asked a parent at May's Parents' Forum. It was the fourt...

In the old days, the staff at Eydon Vale had told the victims of online bullying to forget their hurt and draw a line under it. In assemb...

Gerry Grayling, the local drug enforcer, was in the playground. A crowd of our pupils had gathered. The Head of PE had called me out of l...

“I would compare the spread of violence at turbulent schools to the transmission of a contagious virus," Ada Wright told us on the first ...

Before the Roll of Honour evening, Eydon Vale was always unstable: afterwards, there were days it felt safe. By the last week of the East...

Agree the rules, publish them everywhere, make policing highly visible, give regular, honest feedback and praise the leaders of Eydon Val...

The juxtaposition of the rise in #coronavirus deaths and the severity of #socialisolation is currently creating a sense of Vertigo in may...

The crucial issue was how to create herd immunity from the viruses that affected Eydon Vale: endemic bullying, violence and underachieve...

The blame culture Ofsted initiated had little place at Eydon Vale. Praise and rewards were the key to the development of learning skills ...

All these positive changes took place against the background of a snowstorm. There was joy in the pupils' snowballing but also a sense of...

The closest Eydon Vale came to a riot was in the week after it went into special measures. A third of the staff had phoned in sick. Knots...

Checks should have been carried out before the discipline collapsed. But because Ofsted is a blame game, nobody said anything

According to our audit, the threat of physical bullying was the major concern of two thirds of Eydon Vale's younger pupils. The parents ...

“It’s so quiet. We haven’t had a fire alarm this term,” Errol Samson greeted me that first Saturday. In the week before Christmas, there ...

A Herculean, freckle-faced Year 11 student came up to Miss Starr on the corridor to say how much the school had improved. None of the pup...

My credibility was in the balance. Establishing boundaries with my own top set and special needs classes was essential if I was to win ov...