Government will wait on Ofsted report before decision on Downhills (From Haringey Independent)

Department for Education will wait on Ofsted report before decision on Downhills Primary School

8:19pm Friday 10th February 2012 in News By David Hardiman

The Department for Education says it will wait until the full results of an Ofsted report before pressing ahead with plans to force a Tottenham school into becoming an academy.

The headteacher of Downhills Primary School in Philip Lane, Leslie Church, resigned today after the school learned that it would be placed into special measures after an Ofsted inspection last week.

Investigators were ordered by Education Secretary Michael Gove to visit the school last week after being threatened with legal action over pressing ahead with changes before staff had a chance to show the school had improved.

The result of the inspection paves the way for the Department for Education to force the school into becoming an academy.

But in a statement, it said: “We will need to see the final Ofsted judgement before any decision about the future of Downhills is made.

  “We have been clear that we consider academy status to be the best way to improve schools that are consistently under-performing.

  “Academies have already turned around hundreds of struggling secondary schools across the country and are improving their results at twice the national average rate.

  “We can’t just stand by and do nothing when schools are sub-standard year after year.”

Governors at the school said they would now seek a “constructive dialogue” with Mr Gove about any changes at the school and have written to him to ask for a meeting to discuss the way forward.

The school had been given a deadline of mid-January to commit to becoming an academy and to find a sponsor, or face an interim board of governors being imposed, but the current governors argued that was illegal and threatened a judicial review.

Today they reiterated that they believe that any restructuring of the school should not be “imposed from above” and that the current board of governors should remain.