Curriculum-focused Ofsted fails to mention two subjects not being taught at Tory peer’s academy

Inspectors rated an academy, controlled by a Conservative peer, as good –without mentioning that it does not teach two national curriculum subjects.

Churchill Gardens, part of the Future Academies chain in Pimlico, central London, was given Ofsted’s second-top rating despite not teaching either computing or design and technology.

Although since 2019 Ofsted has had a particular focus on the curriculum, these gaps were not mentioned in the school’s latest report. As Education Uncovered has reported in the past, the conservative curriculum focus of Lord and Lady Nash, the couple who control Future as founding members and trustees, appears to have driven its schools’ lack of teaching of technology.

This is actually the second time that Ofsted has visited the school and not reported on it not teaching at least one national curriculum subject, though this is the first instance of this having happened within a full inspection report, rather than one following a shorter inspection.

Meanwhile, Churchill Gardens staff were said to feel well-supported by the central trust, the report found – without stating that teachers had unanimously voted in favour of strike action during the last academic year, when the inspection happened.

The detail

Education Uncovered was interested to see this school’s Ofsted report coming out, given sustained reporting of it and other Future schools on this website. This primary school, and at least one of the other two primaries within the chain, has not been teaching computing/information technology in recent years, while at Churchill Gardens design and technology is also not taught.

In September last year, I also mentioned the two subjects not being taught at Churchill Gardens, in a piece for the Guardian on strike plans among National Education members at the school.

England’s national curriculum says that both computing and design and technology must be taught to children in both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.

For computing, the national curriculum includes six bullet points setting out what pupils should be taught during Key Stage 1, including that they should “recognise common uses of information technology beyond school,” and “use logical reasoning to predict the behaviour of simple programs”. At Key Stage 2, a further seven bullet points see content becoming more sophisticated.

For design and technology, there are eight bullet points of content at Key Stage 1, and 11 at Key Stage 2.

Academies, of course, do not have to follow the national curriculum, though they are supposed to ensure that it is “broad and balanced.” It is remarkable, however, that Ofsted’s report gave no indication, for readers including parents, that the subjects were not being taught to pupils – or any sense that the school had even been asked about this and had to explain its reasoning.

The report

Churchill Gardens, a 190-pupil primary which academised and joined Future in 2013, was inspected on 27^th and 28^th June, with the subsequent report published on September 30^th.

The words “computing” “ICT/information technology” and “design and technology” do not feature anywhere in the report.

In line with all current Ofsted reports, nowhere does this document actually state which subjects its pupils are taught at the school. Given that, as this case makes clear, academies have the freedom to drop entire subjects if they see fit, this is a puzzling omission.

At Churchill Gardens, children are also taught Latin, rather than a modern foreign language. This is allowed within the national curriculum, which says “teaching may be of any modern or ancient foreign language”. Again, however, it seems strange for the report not to flag up for parents that the school takes what is an unusual approach. In the report, the word “Latin” only features once, in a list of subjects in which Churchill Gardens’ “ambitious curriculum” is followed.

Strike vote

Thirteen months ago, the story I co-wrote for the Guardian made clear that teachers at Churchill Gardens were on the verge of strike action over a range of concerns, including the curriculum and mental health.

An open letter to governors had said that the curriculum taught at the school was among the narrowest in the country, because of a model imposed on the school by the trust. Teachers were also concerned that children were only allowed to speak in class when asked a question by a teacher, and that group work had been forbidden.

Children were said to be being asked to complete university-style essays during Key Stage 2, which staff argued was counterproductive: too often, staff were under such pressure to ensure pupils’ work matched the standard of model essays being demanded by the trust, they were asking children to complete “gap-filling exercises,” which essentially amounted to copying.

The trust had also been accused of failing to safeguard the mental health of its employees, the letter suggested; and failing to meet its legal obligations with regard to children with special educational needs and disabilities.

All of this was despite, I understand, staff having strong regard for the work of the headteacher, Liane Tylee.

Teachers then unanimously backed strike action. But this was called off the day before it was due to start, after Future made a series of concessions including the rewriting of textbooks around which the curriculum centres, and other changes.

Detail of the Ofsted report

Members of the public, including parents, will have got no sense of any of this context from Ofsted’s document on the school.

It states: “Pupils are happy within this caring school community…leaders enrich the curriculum with opportunities to make pupils knowledgeable about and fascinated with the world around them.”

It adds: “Leaders from across the trust have worked together to construct the school’s ambitious curriculum. In many subject areas, such as history, geography, Latin, reading and mathematics, leaders have specified the concepts, skills and vocabulary that pupils most know in order to be able to think critically about what they have learned.

“For example, pupils consider how reliable historical sources are and the factors that made significant historical figures popular, or not. However, in a few subjects, leaders are still in the process of defining the small steps in learning that pupils need to take in order to develop detailed knowledge. As a result, pupils find it more difficult in a few subjects to recall important concepts than they do in other subjects.”  

In computing or D and T, such “small steps” would, of course, be completely absent because the subjects were not taught.

I understand that much of the commentary in the Ofsted report could been seen to reflect changes which have happened in the past year, as a result of the pressure put on the trust by teachers voting in favour of strike action.

The curriculum was rewritten as a result, including the introduction of source work in history which the central trust – seemingly shaped by the traditionalist curriculum views of Lady Nash, who has been described as the “leading force for curriculum development across the trust” - had previously vetoed.

The requirement for pupils to write essays usually expected of much older children was also scrapped as a result of the teachers’ pressure, I understand.

Ofsted’s report also found that “teachers make skilful adaptations for [pupils with SEND], enabling pupils to learn the curriculum and achieve well”. Again, I understand that such pupil-centred changes were a result of the pressure on the trust from teachers.

Ofsted’s report even said: “Staff feel very well supported. They appreciate the quality of training they receive from the trust and the care and consideration show to them by school leaders, including for managing their workload. The governing body provides appropriate support and challenge.”

Again, it is extraordinary that this report has not registered the degree of unhappiness that was in place at this school, in relation to the trust, within the same academic year.

Inspection team, and timing

Weaknesses that this report appears to have – it seems not to give any sense of the reality of how different this school’s running of the curriculum and pedagogy has been, compared to most primaries, or its recent experience of staff relations – clearly reflect structural factors, which go beyond individuals.

The very limited time now given for inspection and report-writing may be factors, as is Ofsted’s eccentric position allowing non-documentation of which subjects are actually being taught (discussed in this piece’s final section).

This website is also wary of sliding into conspiracy theories. But cases such as this make it impossible not to wonder if there is not at least some unconscious bias in favour of certain schools because of who controls them or the politics of their approach to teaching and the curriculum, or of other biases in Ofsted’s system. Can it, for example, inspections be skewed towards not questioning hard enough top-down management approaches by academy trusts, especially those close to government?

On that note, it was interesting to find that the lead inspector on the two-person team that inspected Churchill Gardens used to work as a principal for another academy trust headed by a Conservative peer: the Harris Federation.

The His Majesty’s Inspector, Rebecca Iles-Smith, who led the Churchill Gardens inspection was appointed in 2018 as principal of Harris Academy Bermondsey, a secondary in south London, a position she appears to have held until summer 2022. This would have overlapped with the period when Lawrence Foley, who since 2022 has been chief executive of Future Academies, was also a Harris secondary principal, at Harris Tottenham. While there is no suggestion of this having influenced the inspection, it is perhaps surprising that Ms Iles-Smith was allowed to lead this inspection, because of this professional history.

The other inspector listed as having taken part in the Churchill Gardens visit was Lorraine Slee, whose LinkedIn profile says she has been head of education at another trust which has featured in these pages: Charlton Park Academy.

On timing, the Churchill Gardens report may be seen also as a positive verdict on the work of Ms Tylee, who was well-regarded by staff and whose leadership came out as one of the few positive findings within an internal survey on how supported staff felt at Churchill Gardens last year.

However, Ms Tylee left the school at the end of last term. Those who have grown increasingly sceptical about Ofsted in recent years might wonder about the inspection being convenient timing for this trust, given that the inspectorate visited while this effective leader was still in post, and before a new headteacher, who was to arrive from a Futures secondary school, was in the initial process of finding her feet at the school.
 

Ofsted’s position

I have not put points to Ofsted about this report, since I did so in relation to the last inspection of Churchill Gardens, and it seems the inspectorate’s position has not changed.

In 2021, Education Uncovered reported on inspectors having given the school a “good” rating following a short visit in December 2019, despite information and communication technology/computing not having been offered, and this seeming to have been controversial with parents at another of the trust’s schools: Millbank Academy.

Ofsted told me at the time that inspection reports did not necessarily list the subjects actually being taught, but that it was recommended that for its next visit Churchill Gardens would have a full (“Section 5”) inspection, where inspectors would “seek parents’ views on the school, and explore the breadth and depth of the curriculum in more detail”.

And yet, here we are, following just such a “full inspection”.

Ofsted had set out its stance on this as follows. “Where academies depart from the national curriculum or drop subjects, inspectors will want to understand what is being taught in their place to ensure a broad, rich curriculum.

“Sometimes a school decides not to offer one or two subjects in order to provide more time to concentrate on others, and this will be carefully considered at inspection. However, curriculum breadth and ambition is not just the number of subjects offered – it can be about what happens within particular subjects.”

Ofsted has also added, when I had pressed it on why reports were not providing such basic information, for parents, as which subjects were being taught: “In all inspections, inspectors will seek to understand why an academy has made the decisions they have regarding the curriculum. The National Curriculum is used as a basis for the breadth and balance of a curriculum. Any deviations from this would be assessed by an inspector.”

There is no mention of this having been assessed by the inspector in Churchill Gardens’ latest report, however.

Ofsted had also told me: “If inspectors judge that the school has narrowed the curriculum, they would report this.”

As I wrote back in 2021 in relation to the previous report, though, it is hard to see how ICT not being offered had not narrowed the curriculum in some sense, and this is true with regard to design and technology, too: a curriculum without these subjects is surely narrower than one with them.

Ofsted also told me in the summer, remarkably again perhaps given its focus on the curriculum, that “questions about what a school should or should not include in its curriculum are for the DfE, the schools regulator, rather than Ofsted.”

This was after it emerged that another school with Conservative connections, Michaela Community School, in North London, where the current Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, was one of its founders, had emerged successfully from an Ofsted inspection despite also not teaching computing or design and technology. https://www.educationuncovered.co.uk/news/165136/ofsted-under-fire-for-praising-highprofile-free-schools-curriculum-as-broad-without-mentioning-absence-of-computing-single-sciences-and-design-and-technology.thtml

Ofsted’s system seems often, now, not to bear much scrutiny.