Digging underneath the Ofsted-outstanding rating for one of London’s smaller new primary schools

Harris Primary Academy Purley Way, on the left, just before this building opened in 2017

It was a case of “back to the usual” for the Harris Federation on the Ofsted front, as one of its newer primary schools achieved an “outstanding-in-all-categories” verdict which had the inspector marvelling at the quality of its work with pupils.

This followed, of course, the story Education Uncovered broke last month about another of its schools becoming the first Harris institution ever not to achieve a “good” or “outstanding” rating from the inspectorate.

Still, the latest judgement, on Harris Primary Academy Purley Way, in Croydon, south London seemed intriguing in that the single-inspector team offered no thoughts on a few interesting aspects of this three-year-old school.

The first was that this institution, which resembles a free school in having been founded from scratch in 2016 but which is mysteriously actually classed in official records as a “sponsor-led academy”, is one of the smaller primary schools in London, with only 107 children recorded as on its books as of the last census, in January this year.

The school has a capacity of 630, suggesting three forms of entry, meaning that as of the census it was only 17 per cent full.

Even allowing for the Department for Education’s usual free schools policy of allowing new institutions to fill up by a single year group annually, this would suggest it has space for 90 pupils each year, meaning it should have had 270 pupils in 2018-19, its third year of operation.

So the actual roll was only 40 per cent of that, or only 30 children in year two, 25 in year one and 52 in reception as of January, the DfE data show.

It might be expected, then, that Ofsted inspectors would remark on the small numbers in the school and perhaps the implications and even causes of that. But there was little in this report on that, other than the observation that the school last year consisted of two reception classes, one year 1 class and one year 2 class.

The report does highlight the fact that the school boasts a principal who is “supported by a Harris Federation executive principal”. So that’s one principal-level person for every two classes in the school last year.

Very interestingly, it also remarks that the inspector, Barney Green, seemed to have been faced with a total of four senior people from Harris as part of this inspection.

The report states: “Discussions were held with the principal and executive principal” of the school, before adding: “the inspector met with the chief executive officer and director of primary education of the Harris Federation”.

With the Harris CEO Sir Dan Moynihan having been identified last year by Education Uncovered as England’s busiest school governor, some readers might wonder how he finds the time to interact, too, with inspectors.

The last time Harris responded to a request for comment from me on any story was 18 months ago. So answers as to why the school is taking time to fill up would have to come from elsewhere. Here, then, is some background.

I recall having visited the outside of this school back in the summer of 2017, as it was about to open in its permanent home. This is right next to one of south London’s busiest roads, the A23, which on my visit, mid-morning on a weekday, saw many heavy vehicles trundling along it.

The irreverent local website, Inside Croydon, had covered controversy over air pollution as the proposal to house the school on this site – which Inside Croydon reported had been “abandoned as unsuitable for young children five years ago, when the previous schools [on the site] were closed and moved to a less polluted environment” – made its way through the planning system in 2015.

The website reported that it was even suggested, during the discussion of the planning “pre-application proposal” that “the front part of the building, including the dining facilities and school hall [could be] sealed off from the external atmosphere with special ventilation systems”.

Inside Croydon also reported at the time that the original plan was for the school to have four forms of entry, or 120 pupils per year group.

Asked why the school might not be operating at anywhere near those numbers now, Inside Croydon's editor, Steven Downes, told me that there was an “over-provision of school places within Croydon generally, but specifically in the area around the Purley Way”, and that there had been an expectation that new homes would be built within a mile of the school, but this had yet to happen.

He added: “Why would any parent choose to send their child to a primary built alongside a heavily polluted urban motorway, on the site of a previous school which was closed because the air quality was so poor?”

My analysis of DfE school-by-school spending data also suggests that, in 2017-18, the latest year for which information is available, this school was in the top 10 of all academies in England for the level of spend on supply staff per pupil, at £1,462.

Even if this latter fact may have been tricky for a single inspector to have been expected to have dug up in preparing for a short visit, and even if parents would accept the school’s environmental set-up in return for the high quality of education on offer as reported by the inspector, all of the above information seems interesting context.

Maybe we do need to give inspectors more time getting to know schools and their background stories.

Something Wyld going on at Ark?

Why does a new Ofsted board member, who also sits in the House of Lords having been controversially handed a peerage by her former boss in 2016, appear on the websites of most schools within one of the government’s favourite academy chains?

This is one of the stranger tip-offs to come the way of this website. Laura Wyld was among  a host of  people contentiously appointed to the Lords back in August 2016 in the resignation honours list of David Cameron, to whom she was reportedly a senior advisor on honours.

She was also one of five new appointments to Ofsted’s board over the summer.

Ark, as this website often mentions, has many links to the higher echelons of government policymaking. So perhaps it is not surprising that Wyld should show up online in connection to an Ark academy, having visited the sixth form of one of its free schools, Ark Bolingbroke.

What is odder, though, is that, her name appears on the website of several Ark schools, in large letters, but without further content. Such as this one. Or this one. Or this one.

In fact, if you put in the term “ark ‘tags/laurawyld’” into a search engine, several screens of links to Ark academies will come up, all with their own specific page on “Laura Wyld” in the web address, though all without content.

All of which has left our source wondering, given Wyld’s presence on the Ofsted board, if this isn’t yet another case of someone close to the chain having influence with the inspectorate. It may be, of course, just some odd quirk. Curious, nonetheless.