Ofsted rates another Astrea secondary as good – in teeth of worst parental ratings of any major trust last year

Controversial trust racks up a hat-trick of "good" inspection results, despite parent responses in Ofsted surveys.

 

A controversial academy trust has racked up a hat-trick of “good” inspection results for its secondary schools in Cambridgeshire over the past 10 months – despite a majority of parents responding to Ofsted’s surveys saying they would not recommend the academies to others.

Ernulf Academy, in St Neots, was given the inspectorate’s second-best judgement across all four aspects inspected, following a visit by Ofsted in January. This was an upgrade on the inspectorate’s last visit, in 2023, which had rated it “requires improvement”.

Yet 55 per cent of the 310 parents responding this academic year said they would not recommend the school to others, compared to 45 per cent who said they would do so.

These figures are much worse than the average for schools nationwide, with just 16 per cent of those responding to Ofsted’s parent surveys last year saying they would not recommend the institution their child attended to others.

Meanwhile, Astrea’s other school in the town, Longsands Academy, has also been given a clean bill of health by Ofsted after the inspectorate carried out an “urgent inspection” last month. However, last year that school racked up the highest negative Ofsted parental reviews for any institution in a single calendar year, going back to 2017, Education Uncovered can reveal, while Astrea received more negative responses than any other academy trust.

The detail

Ofsted’s findings on Ernulf Academy, the smaller of the two schools it runs in the town of St Neots at 733 pupils as of last year, prompted some raised eyebrows among local sources, given the controversy that the school and its larger neighbour Longsands Academy continue to attract.

Last year, the prospective Conservative Parliamentary candidate for the area, Anthony Browne, conducted a survey of parents at the two schools, which he said had left him “deeply troubled”. Some 92 per cent of the 566 responses said they were not “confident at all” or “not very confident” in the trust’s leadership, 84 per cent disagreed that the trust had improved the schools, and 79 per cent said its behaviour policies were “too strict”. 

Pre-election hustings in the town, featuring candidates from a range of parties, saw none of them defending Astrea or the academies policy in detail, while the person who went on to be elected as its MP, Ian Sollom for the Lib Dems, also called for at least one of the schools to leave the trust.

Also last year, a teacher leaving Ernulf offered a blistering critique of Astrea’s policies, including on behaviour, in a resignation letter. 

Ernulf “Parent View” findings

The results of Ofsted’s “Parent View” survey on Ernulf, in terms of responses completed by parents this academic year, are available on the inspectorate’s website.

Other than the 55 per cent of those responding who said they would not recommend Ernulf to others, a range of other figures were substantially worse than national averages, in terms of responses available in Ofsted’s latest national dataset*.

Some 44 per cent of Ernulf respondents disagreed with the statement “my child is happy at this school” – 19 per cent strongly. In comparison, 55 per cent agreed that their child was happy, though only 13 per cent agreed strongly. Nationally last year, only 11 per cent disagreed with the statement on their children being happy, while 59 per cent agreed strongly with it.

Some 32 per cent disagreed with the statement “my child feels safe at this school,” compared to only nine per cent nationally.

Strikingly, given the emphasis that Astrea has put on behaviour, 38 per cent of respondents said they did not feel the school made sure its pupils were well-behaved, compared to a figure of 13 per cent nationally.

And, among 100 responses from parents saying their child had a special need or disability (SEND), 48 per cent disagreed with the statement “the school gives them the support they need to succeed,” of which 29 per cent strongly disagreed. This compared to a nationwide figure for 2024 of 29 per cent disagreeing overall, of which 15 per cent strongly disagreed.

Remarkably, too, Ernulf’s parental approval ratings, as measured through these Ofsted statistics, have declined slightly since the last inspection, even though the inspectorate has now upgraded its verdict on the school.

During 2022-2023, 52 per cent of 164 respondents said they would recommend Ernulf to others, against 48 per cent who said they would not. Some 36 per cent said their child was not happy at the school. Ernulf, which was also under Astrea’s control at the time, had been inspected in January 2023 and rated “requires improvement”.

What inspectors concluded this time

Following its visit in January this year, Ofsted found Ernulf to be “good” in “quality of education”, “behaviour and attitudes,” “personal development,” and “leadership and management,” with its comments on parental unhappiness seemingly limited to issues around how the school communicates with its community, rather than the substance of parents’ concerns.

The report found: “Pupils settle into the life of the school well…older pupils are, in the main, positive about the improvements that have been made to the school…the revised curriculum is now ambitious for all pupils. It has been expertly designed to build on pupils’ prior learning and revisit important knowledge.

It added: “Due to recent improvements in the curriculum, most pupils now achieve well. However, the impact of these changes is not yet evident in the published exam results, as previous pupils have not benefited fully from them. In lessons, most pupils behave well. They understand the rules, and most pupils follow them consistently…disruption to learning is rare.”

Despite the Parent View responses on this, which were not mentioned in the report, the inspection concluded that: “The school ensures that pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are well supported.”

The report also stated: “Governors, trustees and leaders have worked collaboratively and effectively to achieve significant improvements since the previous inspection. Many staff are positive about the school. However, a significant number of parents and carers report issues with communication. They feel their concerns are not always acknowledged or dealt with in a timely manner. This frustrates parents and affects their confidence in how well the school deals with their concerns.”

Parental views, then, were a matter of the school and trust communicating better, the report implied. Under “what does the school need to do to improve?”, it stated: “The school should take rapid action to strengthen communication strategies to ensure that parents and carers feel informed, valued and included in their child’s education.”

This implied that the inspectors disagreed with the substance of many parents’ concerns.

Further background on this inspection

Ofsted’s inspection team was carried out by four inspectors, all of whom appear relatively local, all of whom are current or recent school leaders, and two of whom appear to have worked within the same small multi-academy trust.

Its leader, Bessie Owen, is a His Majesty’s Inspector who until 2022 was the headteacher of Witchford Village College, an academy which is also in Cambridgeshire and which is run by the Cambridge-based Eastern Learning Alliance. This has seven academies in Cambridgeshire, and one in Norfolk.

Of the other three, one, Peter Petrou is listed on the website of Goffs Academy, in Waltham Cross near Cheshunt, Hertfordshire as its associate principal for behaviour and safeguarding. Another, Tom Sparks, was as of 2021 the principal of another school, Goffs Churchgate, which is also in Waltham Cross. Both of these institutions are part of a four-school academy chain called Generations Multi-Academy Trust.

The final inspector, James Shapland, is head of Ashlyn’s School, a foundation (non-academy) institution in Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire.

Astrea has faced controversy for bringing in staff from outside a particular school when that school is inspected, having admitted last year that 25 people from other academies or its head office were drafted in for the inspection of Longsands in February last year.

Last month, I was told that some Longsands teachers left their normal lessons for at least one of Ernulf’s inspection days to be at the latter school when Ofsted visited.

Other Astrea inspections last year, and parent responses

Longsands saw its own Ofsted rating upgraded from “requires improvement” to “good” last June, following the inspectorate’s visit in February last year.

However, this verdict had coincided with responses to Ofsted’ “Parent View” survey on the school being overwhelmingly negative: some 85 per cent of those taking part said they would not recommend the school to others. In addition, as Education Uncovered reported at the time, nearly half of surveyed staff said it had got worse since the last inspection, and sadly nearly 80 percent of students who filled out response forms said they would not recommend it to a friend.

Separately, St Ivo Academy, a third Astrea secondary in Cambridgeshire, received a “good” inspection verdict in May last year, following an Ofsted in April. But that school had seen 60 per cent of parents say they would not recommend the school to others.

Ten days ago, the Sunday Times published rankings of secondary schools in terms of the proportion of parents responding to Ofsted’s “Parent View” surveys who said their child was happy at school. Based on this, a local newspaper in Cambridgeshire then reported that Longsands had the lowest proportion of any secondary in England, in terms of parents saying their child was happy at school. Some 69 per cent disagreed that their child was happy at Longsands, with only 29 per cent saying they were happy, compared to national averages of 11 per cent and 88 per cent respectively. 

Now Education Uncovered’s own analyses shows that Longsands has had the highest number of negative overall responses on “Parent View,” within a single calendar year, of any institution within Ofsted’s database, which offers school-by-school data going back over seven years, to 2017.

In 2024, the school had 653 parents’ responses saying they would not recommend it to others. This was nearly twice as high as the school with the second-highest absolute number: North Bromsgrove High School in Worcestershire, which was a community (non-academy) school at the time it received 327 negative responses, in 2018

Third on this list was Ark Alexandra Academy, in Hastings, East Sussex, with 315 negative responses last year. Fourth came St Ivo Academy, with 308 negative responses, also last year. This spreadsheet contains 38,000 lines of data, with schools featuring each year they appeared in Ofsted’s “Parent View” statistics based on responses for a particular year.

Astrea had the highest number of negative – would not recommend the school to others – verdicts on its academies of any trust in England last year, seemingly driven largely by those Longsands and St Ivo responses.

Some 1,114 responses on that question were negative in relation to Astrea’s schools, or 66 per cent of the total number of its parents responding. Second on this list, in terms of absolute numbers of negative responses, was Outwood Grange, the academy trust formerly led by the current chief inspector of schools, on 711 negative responses or 37 per cent of the total.

In terms of the proportion of negative responses, Astrea’s figure was higher than that of any other trust which had more than 250 parental submissions.

Latest Longsands report

Finally, Longsands’ own latest Ofsted report was published last week. This had seen an inspection team visit without notice. In his letter to the school announcing the verdict, the lead inspector Steve Woodley wrote: “The inspection was caried out because His Majesty’s Chief Inspector wished to determine the effectiveness of safeguarding arrangements at the school as concerns had been raised with Ofsted about the effectiveness of leadership and management at the school, and the behaviour and attitudes of pupils.”

However, the two-person team deemed that the school’s safeguarding was effective, in the context of a letter which was largely positive about Longsands.

The inspectors concluded that “pupils feel safe in school”. This finding would, of course, have been welcomed by the trust, and may also have been welcome news to members of its community. However, a student survey completed at the time of Longsands’ inspection last year, by 272 pupils, had found 64 per cent stating that they felt safe at school only “some of the time” or less frequently than that. 30 per cent had said they felt safe “almost never” or “never”.

The latest report did acknowledge that there had been “issues caused by staff turnover” in the school, Education Uncovered and local news sources having reported concerns about this over the past 18 months. However, it appeared to give little sense of the scale of staff dissatisfaction at Longsands over that period, with the inspectorate’s official survey last year finding that 48 per cent of those responding were of the view that the school had got worse since the previous inspection.

The latest inspection letter said the other inspector on the visit was Bessie Owen, the leader of the Ernulf inspection in the same month.

Astrea Academy Trust has not been responding to requests for comment from this website.

*I have compared Ernulf’s “Parent View” responses to the latest figures published by Ofsted at school level across England. These relate to the last calendar year: all responses to January 6^th, 2025.