Teachers warned Ofsted of “culture of fear” at Brampton Manor Academy –but the inspectorate appears to have ignored them

An Ofsted-outstanding academy forced teachers to resign or be sacked after applying for positions at other schools, amid a “culture of fear”, detailed accounts from former staff members have alleged.

But when seven of them provided written testimonies of their experiences to Ofsted, the inspectorate appears to have ignored their concerns, instead then giving the school its highest rating, in a report which said unequivocally that staff there felt “well supported”.

Two of the seven former teachers told Education Uncovered there was a culture whereby teachers had felt intimidated by Brampton Manor Academy under its £200,000-a-year-plus superhead, Dayo Olukoshi, and completely let down by the inspectorate.

Three former teachers wrote that they were forced to resign without having secured jobs elsewhere after notifying Brampton Manor, a 2,750-pupil secondary in London’s East End, that they were applying for jobs in other schools.

Another former member of staff had told Ofsted about having been sacked and marched off the school site after taking a single day off sick, while another was put on “gardening leave”, never to return to the school, without explanation, they said. I have also been told that the working culture at the school has led young teachers to quit the profession.

Teachers, often young recent graduates, have routinely been walked off site having had their contracts terminated immediately, staff sources have said.

The staff members submitting statements to Ofsted pointed to exemplary records before they left the school, but several complained in the testimonies of how their experiences had impacted on their mental health.

Brampton Manor has not been responding to requests for comment.

This is the latest development in the case of Brampton Manor, the academy in Newham, East London, which has won glowing headlines for its record of getting pupils often from very disadvantaged backgrounds into Oxbridge, but which had been hit by a damning employment tribunal verdict in recent weeks.

The tribunal had found that Yasmin Omar, who worked as a newly-qualified teacher at the school in 2018-19, had suffered numerous instances of discrimination arising from her disability – she was in the early months of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis – as well as “harassment” by the academy.

Omar’s trauma at the school had started on her first day as an NQT, the tribunal found, as she was “effectively refused” taking half an hour off to attend an urgent hospital appointment. She ended up homeless while still employed by the school, as it paid only statutory sick pay of less than £100 a week as she was absent through her condition.

The tribunal had also revealed that the school offered only this national minimum sickness pay for its staff as a whole; that all staff were told to attend hospital appointments outside of school hours; and that any member of staff is set a target of “no further absences” for the rest of the academic year having taken a day off sick.

Following Education Uncovered’s coverage of the Omar verdict, former staff members and a parent have come forward. I have now seen an email that went to the inspectorate on February 6^th, 2018, as Brampton Manor was about to be inspected.

Attached to it were the detailed accounts of seven teachers who had recently left the school. The testimony included three separate accounts from former teachers in which they set out how they had been forced to resign having applied for jobs elsewhere.

Another teacher, a graduate in their first six months at the school, told Ofsted how they had been sacked after taking a single day off sick. Another said he had been put on “gardening leave” without explanation. Another, seeking assistant headteacher jobs elsewhere, was told the school would only support them applying for head of department roles. The final teacher resigned after, they said, being in meetings in which senior management put them under, they said, “relentless and threatening” pressure over their pupils’ exam results.

I have summarised some of the teachers’ testimonies below.

Another attachment to the email detailed what appeared to be high staff turnover during the previous academic year: 31 staff had left in the summer of 2017, three had been put on “gardening leave” and six had left earlier that year: a total of more than a quarter of the teaching workforce in this, the latest full year before Ofsted visited.

All but one of the seven teachers were in their first two years at Brampton Manor.

How teachers’ experiences were raised with Ofsted

I was told that one of these teachers had flagged up the evidence in a phone conversation to Ofsted. They had been encouraged to send the staff statements by email to a named person, Paul Wagstaff, who at the time appears to have been a senior Her Majesty’s Inspector.

But after they sent it, there was no response from Ofsted. And there was no sense of any problem with management-staff relations in the glowing report which followed.

The Ofsted report, published in March 2018 following the inspection led by Amanda Carter-Fraser HMI, instead offered an almost exclusively uncritical verdict on Brampton Manor, in granting it a second successive “outstanding” rating, following one in 2012. 

As well as lavishing praise on the school’s leadership and teaching, the 2018 report concluded that teachers felt “well supported and value opportunities to share excellent practice”.

The report added that “pupils value how everyone in the school…gets on and works together so well”. Governors – Brampton’s overarching trust was and still is led by its longstanding chair, Marion Faust - were said to be “highly considerate of the health and well-being of the school community”.

There was no mention of teacher turnover in the school, and no sense whatsoever that the detailed accounts from staff, which teachers have said were in line with the Yasmin Omar tribunal verdict which would be published in May this year and related to events months after the inspection had taken place while also offering evidence on policies affecting all the school’s staff, had been taken into account.

One of the teachers’ testimonies mentioned a very high turnover of teachers within a single department – seven teachers leaving, in a department of only seven, within a two-year period. I have seen a written account from another former staff member, not featuring in the seven, who has also attested to a succession of teachers leaving in a year, within another national curriculum subject. Again, turnover did not feature in Ofsted’s inspection report.

One of the teachers, Ian Duxbury, said: “At no point did Ofsted respond to us, nor was any mention about staff welfare mentioned in the subsequent Ofsted report. As you can imagine, we all felt pretty despondent about the whole experience.”

Another former teacher told me that Ofsted had appeared to have had “no interest” in looking at the report, since the school was getting such good results for its largely disadvantaged pupil intake. This had left staff “quite deflated”.

Ofsted asked to explain

I asked Ofsted why it had not responded to the teachers’ evidence, and why no sense of what were very detailed and surely concerning experiences of staff had been captured in the report. I also asked if the way that staff were treated was of any interest to Ofsted. 

It first sent a more general response, stating: “Inspectors always consider the views expressed by staff, pupils and parents during an inspection. In this particular case, the views expressed by staff at the time of the inspection were captured in the report.”

Ofsted’s reply had also stated: “When further information comes to light, such as the outcome of the tribunal, we will consider it when determining the timing of the next tribunal.”

I then pointed out, however, that the outcome of the tribunal had already emerged, with only the level of compensation to Omar still to be decided.

I also asked Ofsted whether it was saying that the views of staff, as set out in the emailed evidence by the seven of them, had really been “captured” in the report. There was no direct answer.

In reply, Ofsted said only: “During an inspection, inspectors speak directly to staff and consider any feedback we have received about a school. Our inspection reports give an overview of findings against the inspection criteria – it’s not possible for every piece of evidence to be mentioned.”

I had also asked the inspectorate to point to specific parts of the report in which staff views had been “captured”. Again, there was no direct answer.

I then asked directly if inspectors had read the emailed accounts before reaching their judgment on the school. Ofsted has yet to respond.

Reacting on twitter to my tweets about the Omar verdict, another former member of staff at Brampton, Ed Durbin – who was not one of the seven who had submitted testimonies to Ofsted – wrote: “If you have not read the @Yasminomar tribunal judgement please do. I did my NQT and NQT+1 year at Brampton Manor. Sadly Yasmin’s experience is not uncommon. This culture was endemic in my time there.

“I was one of 18 NQTs in my first year. Only 1 of us was still teaching at BMA after 2 years. Lots of incredibly talented people decided that teaching wasn’t for them as a result of their experiences.

“I met the head teacher at interview and 2 years later when he called me into a meeting to yell at me to try to get me to tell him that I was resigning. It was March. I hadn’t left school before 7pm that calendar year.

“I still have 2/3 BMA [Brampton Manor Academy] anxiety nightmares each year.”

He added: “BMA gets incredible results and burn[s] through young teachers like matches…the sector is doing a disservice to this type of management that permitted the abhorrent treatment of Yasmin to go unreported and unchecked.”

Duxbury said the school “was just seeing so many young, really good teachers just saying ‘this isn’t for me: I’m not going into teaching, I can’t do this’. [They were] leaving completely [the profession] because they became so disenfranchised. You try to say to them, ‘look, honestly, it’s not always like this’ [in other schools] but it it’s a real shame that so many good people have been lost to a profession which is desperate for teachers.”

Duxbury had said that staff were generally better-paid at Brampton Manor than at other schools, with graduates on its “assessment only” route – unqualified teachers – paid £28,000 a year. But the school would “churn through those like nobody’s business”. As I reported last month, Olukoshi’s pay doubled in eight years: from £125,073 in 2011-12 to £252,136 in 2019-20.

Duxbury said that pupils at the high-performing school knew about the professional anxiety facing many staff members, and that the students themselves were under great pressure, with these young people “in from any time after 6am and the expectation is that you’re there till quite late. Some of these students are at the point of burnout”.

I put detailed points to Brampton Manor. As with my previous reporting on this school, there has yet to be a response from it.

Several of the former teachers’ testimonies to Ofsted said they hoped that their evidence could contribute to the practices they documented stopping. But not only did they seem to make no impact on the inspectorate, but there has also been no evidence of any public response from either the school itself or the trust board – still led by Faust - to the tribunal’s findings.

Some of the former teachers’ stories

Ian Duxbury had been the school’s head of psychology, with a seemingly impeccable record at Brampton Manor, having joined from a school in Manchester in 2015.

After his first year at the school, Duxbury said he had achieved some of the highest A-level results in the country – an outcome which had pleased Olukoshi.

But all changed, his testimony suggested, after he applied for a job elsewhere.

Duxbury had been commuting to Brampton Manor, in East Ham, from his home in Kent. Earlier in 2016-17, he had indicated to his line manager that he would be “keeping an eye out for jobs closer to home”, though he would stay on “for the foreseeable future if the right job did not come up”. His line manager, Duxbury’s testimony to Ofsted said, had seemed supportive.

Duxbury duly applied for a job in Kent, and, on May 17th, 2017, was telephoned to be invited for an interview. First thing at Brampton Manor the next day, he told his line manager, who told him he understood.  However, by break time, his line manager had found Duxbury to tell him that he had left it too late for the school to appoint another head of department, and that “the school will not approve you going to interview until we have your resignation”.

Duxbury was then told that he could either write a letter of resignation, or his employment would be terminated.

When he questioned this, Duxbury’s testimony said he was taken to Olukoshi’s office. Duxbury told Ofsted that, “in an incredibly intimidating manner,” Olukoshi had then told him: “I have asked [the line manager] to demand a letter of resignation from you today. Not tomorrow, today. If you fail to provide a letter of resignation I will terminate your employment.”

Olukoshi then went on to suggest that, should Duxbury’s contract be terminated, there might be implications for the references he received in seeking to find work elsewhere.

Olukoshi added, said the testimony: “I will convey my decision to you in writing. But let me be very clear that the implication of that is that any reference that comes [out] of this school will have to say that your employment with this school is terminated. And then I will go into whatever reasons I have to give in that reference, whether in writing or confidentially over the phone to whoever is requesting that reference.” The executive principal gave Duxbury until the end of lunch to make the decision.

Having consulted his union, Duxbury said he was then called into another meeting with Olukoshi and his line manager, without having been given the opportunity to have anyone else sitting in with him. He said he would not be resigning until he had sought further union representation. Olukoshi, he said, then told him that his contract was being terminated, he was to leave the premises immediately, not speak to any member of staff and his computer account had been disabled.

He was then given a letter confirming the termination.

Duxbury took a copy of the letter, which was also sent to Ofsted. Signed by Olukoshi and dated the same day, May 18th, it said: “I write further to our meeting today following your recent meetings with your line manager…, I regret to inform you that I have come to the decision to terminate your employment with the Academy Trust with immediate effect.”

The letter stated that Duxbury would not need to be in work from that date and would be paid in lieu of notice until the end of the academic year – more than two months.

As he was being walked off site by his line manager, the latter told Duxbury that it might not be too late to hand in his resignation. Duxbury told Ofsted that he was reminded, at this point, “that currently any reference from the school will say ‘contract terminated’ and realistically who is going to employ a teacher who has had their contract terminated?”

Duxbury changed his mind and turned around.

His testimony said: “I was placed in a meeting room next to the principal’s office and given a piece of paper and a pen to hand-write a letter of resignation. Once I had done this, the principal came in, took away the letter of contract termination…and took the hand-written letter as confirmation of my resignation.”

Duxbury also told Ofsted: “What I have found most difficult to comprehend is that this was done during the exam period, with GCSE, AS and A-level exams still to come. If I had left the school at that point this would have left one member of staff…to manage approx. 300 students in the run-up to their exams…this would no doubt have had an impact on student attainment.”

In this testimony submitted nine months after the incident, Duxbury also wrote: “This situation has significantly impacted on my confidence, especially in terms of my teaching. I have struggled with sleeping and have definitely experienced issues relating to my mental health as a result. Sadly a culture of fear and bullying exists in the school…staff are afraid to speak out.”

Duxbury added that, in August 2017 on receiving his final payslip, he found he had been deducted a day’s wages for “unpaid leave”, which he said he could only assume was as a result of taking the day off for the interview.

Another of the seven former teachers, Helen Masters*, who was in her first year of teaching at the school, also wrote of having been forced to resign, having also applied for a job, with matters having come to a head in the same week as Duxbury.

In the afternoon of Monday, May 15th, Masters told her line manager that she had applied for a job and had been invited to an interview on the Friday.

The next morning at 8.10am, the line manager “called me into an office in which another SLT [senior leadership team] staff member was present,” said Masters’ evidence.

It added: “On the table in front of me was a blank pad of paper with a pen on top, and next to it a letter in a sealed envelope. [The line manager] told me my contract was being ‘terminated’ this year. He said I could either resign or take the letter of dismissal, adding that it was in my interest to do the former.

“When I asked several times the basis for this, I was met with the same word for word reply that it was ‘in the best interests of the school and students.’”

“In tears,” Masters asked if she could hand in her resignation letter later, but this was “denied”. She said she was not even allowed to read the letter of dismissal. She added: “I simply had to pick one of the two options there and then. In a state of emotional distress, I felt cornered and had no option but to resign.”

She added: “The manner in which I was forced to resign was very upsetting, and in the days following I was in quite a state of shock. I very much hope measures can be taken to prevent this type of incident from reoccurring.”

A third teacher, Robert Bradshaw, who had been head of economics, said he had been put on “gardening leave” without explanation, with no reason or possible cause discernible in his testimony.

I understand, however, that the school’s move had come after he handed in notice that he would be starting a new job overseas in September – only to be told, as his final A2 exam group started their final paper, that he was being made to leave the school with weeks still to go in the year, for which he would be paid but would be required to do no work.

This had come at the end of the academic year – on July 16th, 2017 – as a “shock” as previous appraisals had been “excellent” and his pupils’ results had been predicted to be amongst the best in the school.

At the time Bradshaw had been busy writing the school’s new GCSE course, as his department struggled to deal with huge teacher turnover: that year, two teachers “had been sacked” and another had “left”. This represented “huge staff turnover”, in a department of only seven people. Over the two years Bradshaw worked at the academy, he said seven teachers in total in the department had left.

Like the other teachers supplying testimony, Bradshaw pointed to an exemplary record, with commitments going far beyond standard hours. “I routinely worked 50-60 hour weeks [and] had worked weekends to put on revision sessions,” his testimony said.

It added: “In being placed upon garden leave I was given no reason and no opportunity to say goodbye to staff and students with whom I had worked, and was immediately walked from the school site.

“I was also issued with a threatening letter informing me that any attempt I made to contact [former] colleagues or meet up with them would result in [me] being in breach of my contract and I would not be paid. This prevented me from meeting up with friends or from attending any leaving parties with colleagues who I had worked hard and built relationships with.

“In my opinion, the process of being placed on gardening leave, with no explanation given can only have been to cause humiliation and a dehumanising exit from the academy. It has [also] become apparent in my time at the academy that teachers and senior management are visibly afraid of the head teacher.

“For myself, being immediately escorted from the school premises caused a great deal of anxiety as to why this had happened, the impact on references for future employment, and whether I would be paid or not. The impact on my mental health was great and unnecessary. This was a clear act of bullying…many staff work in fear for their job under unacceptable pressure…

“I have found the academy a terrible place to work, especially for young teachers without sufficient experience or confidence to complain.”

*Helen Masters is a pseudonym.