Former chair of governors sought to challenge positive report on school by consultant, email shows

Norfolk, where goings-on are continuing to keep Education Uncovered busy

The former chair of governors of an infant school in Norfolk sought to challenge an external report, commissioned before she took on the role, which had portrayed it as successful, an email seen by Education Uncovered discloses.

The move by Karen Gardner, the former chair of Nightingale infant and nursery school near Norwich who went on to chair a local academy trust, Ad Meliora, seems to throw into sharp relief how fraught the relationship between governing body and management can sometimes be.

As Education Uncovered revealed in February, Gardner was also chair of governors of another school which failed an Ofsted report back in 2016, Blenheim Park. This then went on to join the Ad Meliora academy chain.

And, as revealed in a comment underneath that story, Gardner was also chair of governors at another Norfolk school, Wensum junior, in Norwich when in 2014 it slid into special measures. Gardner currently chairs the Ofsted-good rated St William’s primary school, also in Norwich.

The latest revelation comes with multiple sources having expressed concerns about goings-on during the period 2016 to 2018 at Nightingale, a formerly Ofsted-outstanding institution which slid to “inadequate” in a report published in March 2018 under the regime of a former headteacher, Jonathan Coy, who was appointed during Gardner’s time as chair.

The school has since had to take on academy status, though not under Ad Meliora. As Education Uncovered reported in October, Coy is currently deputy chief executive at Ad Meliora.

Neither Gardner nor Coy have responded to requests for comment.

The detail

In the email, dated 9^th May, 2016 – two months after Gardner was co-opted on to the school’s governing body as chair – she expressed strongly-worded concerns suggesting that the report of an external “Education Challenge Partner”, who had been brought in to evaluate Nightingale’s quality,  had “inaccuracies," suggesting its overall verdict was too kind to the school. 

Nightingale had been adjudged outstanding by Ofsted in 2008, with that verdict repeated following a short inspection in 2011.

The consultant’s report, dated 9^th March, 2016, had supported internal school judgements that, at that time, the school was “outstanding” for pupil outcomes and for pupil development, and “good with outstanding elements” for leadership and management; for teaching, learning and assessment; and for early years.

The report had concluded: “This is a highly ambitious school where all stakeholders work in partnership to enable pupils to make excellent progress and have self-confidence and self-belief. Leaders are highly reflective and keen to ensure that they continue to make improvements to provide pupils with rich learning experiences.”

Yet, in her email to the then-leadership and two other governors at the school, Gardner queried multiple aspects of the report, adding that its judgement on “leadership and management” should be “no more than requiring improvement”.

Governors are, of course, supposed to hold school management to account, and to set strategic direction. Sources close to the school have told Education Uncovered, however, that Gardner had a confrontational manner which had brought with it problems.

One long-standing staff member said that Nightingale had been a “wonderful, caring, nurturing school which had robust systems and a team ethos,” but that it had been “torn apart” after the arrival of Gardner and Coy, who joined in September 2016.

The former staff member said: “This Education Challenge Partner report, which had gone through the usual checks, had said that the school was good with elements of outstanding. But one of the first things that [Gardner] did was to say it was wrong.

“She launched a formal challenge against the report, but she had only just joined the school.”

Education Uncovered has also been made aware of concerns from parents about the way the school was run under Coy and Gardner, who held the chair of governors position until November 2017.

This website was sent a 17-page letter of complaint from parents of a boy with autism. This states their view that the school had been “very worthy” of its previous Ofsted-outstanding report. But it then details their account of allegations of a string of mistakes made by the school as he struggled with anxiety from autumn 2016 onwards.

Statements from four other parents are also sharply critical of Coy and Gardner, one of them stating their “disbelief” on learning – via our story last October – that the two had gone on to work together in the Ad Meliora trust after Nightingale had failed its Ofsted inspection.

Education Uncovered was told by our former staff member source that Gardner announced a restructure of staff in September 2016, on Coy’s first day at work, on grounds that both the school’s financial basis and its teaching standards needed improving. Staff were then told to reapply for their jobs, I was told, leaving them “not knowing if they were coming or going”.

However, official school-by-school financial data, submitted to the DfE, seems to provide little evidence that this resulted in any significant saving, with overall expenditure falling only 1.6 per cent over the period 2016-2018.

Meanwhile, spending on supply staff nearly trebled, from £18,492 in 2015-16 to £47,601 in 2017-18. The failing Ofsted judgement for the school, based on inspectors’ visit to it in March 2018, seems to undermine any suggestion that Nightingale’s academic standards had been improved.

The former staff member said: “There are hardly any staff left [from before the time of Gardner and Coy]. It was such a lovely school to work in, with a lovely atmosphere, the results were always good, the children were well-behaved. We had some difficult children, but we always knew what we were doing. The school was just completely changed from what it was.”

Gardner, who stood down as chair of Nightingale in November 2017, was chair of the Kings Lynn-based Ad Meliora chain from April to November 2018. She is now chair of governors at St William’s primary school, in Norwich.

Coy remains as “deputy chief executive headteacher” of Ad Meliora, as well as headteacher of one of its schools, Reffley Academy in Kings Lynn.

Minutes of a Nightingale governors’ meeting from February 2018, released under freedom of information, show that the DfE was proposing at that time to introduce it to an academy trust, which was unnamed in the minutes. There has been speculation that it was earmarked for Ad Meliora, with our source stating that that trust’s chief executive had visited Nightingale when it was led by Coy.

However, in the event it joined another trust, Inclusive Schools, last December.

I approached Gardner via St William’s, but was told that she did not wish to comment. There was no response to a request for comment sent to Coy, via Ad Meliora.