Hope, even for 'worst' school

By Mike Baker
BBC education correspondent

"England's worst". It is a terrible label to put on any school.

"A kick in the teeth" was how the head teacher of one of the lowest-scoring schools described this week's league tables.

But when I visited the state school that occupied the very bottom position, I found a rather different attitude.

The Ramsgate School in Kent has a truly shocking record. Just 4% of pupils managed 5 GCSEs at grade C or above. The national average is around 50%.

This was not a blip. It was 4% the year before and 4% the year before that.

In 2002 only one student in seven achieved the expected level in English at age 14. Around one in five leaves the school with no qualifications at all - not even a single grade G at GCSE.

Dismal failure

There are powerful mitigating factors for these results. I will come to those in a moment.

But what was encouraging in a visit that might otherwise have been dispiriting was the determination - finally - to do something about this dreadful state of affairs, which has already condemned a generation of pupils to dismal failure.

No excuses were offered. No attempt was made to hide the terrible record. No exaggerated claims were made for the future.

Of course, it is easier for the current executive head teacher, Keith Hargrave, to be honest. He has only been there since June and he remains head at his usual school some miles away in Canterbury.

Before he arrived the school had gone through four head teachers in five years. His job is to try to shake off the "failing" school label before The Ramsgate School closes and re-emerges as a city academy in 2005.

Keith Hargrave has his work cut out at The Ramsgate School

If he succeeds it will be, in part, because there were no excuses about league tables being "a kick in the teeth".

He knows the 575 pupils at the school - and hundreds more who have left in recent years - have been steadily ground down by their experiences there.

He admits they were failed by poor management, inadequate support from the LEA and weak teaching.

Perhaps they were also failed by Ofsted which, despite inspections in 1999 and 2002, did not place the school into "special measures" until January 2003.

In May 1999 the school was judged to be providing an "acceptable standard" of education.

Yet the following summer just 3% achieved five good GCSEs.

'Sink' schools

Perhaps the children were also let down by a system of education in Kent which produces a very distinct hierarchy of schools? There are grammar schools, church schools, and specialist schools.

At the bottom in each area is a school a bit like Ramsgate. They are the "sink schools".

Some people in Kent say it suited everyone else to have one school where all the low-achieving and problematic children could be placed.

The Ramsgate School certainly has extenuating circumstances, although the new management does not regard these as "excuses".

It gets the students that have not been selected or chosen by the other schools in the area. It also has increasing numbers of children in local authority care. There are several children of asylum seekers too.

Pupils responded to good teaching

On entry to the school, the pupils' prior attainment is well below average. Teacher turnover is high and recruitment difficult. To cap it all, it is housed in an unlovely, flat-roofed, late-twentieth-century building.

But while all this could explain a failure to reach national average exam results, it does not excuse the fact that each year fewer than half a dozen out of over 100 leavers achieve the sort of qualifications needed to go on to A-levels.

Keith Hargrave's refusal to accept excuses meant that one of his first actions was to place 27 out of 35 teachers onto the first stage of dismissal procedures.

Some had been there for many, many years. Some were well-liked by their pupils. Many, no doubt, were hard-working and had the best of intentions.

But it was obvious many could no longer deliver for the children at Ramsgate.

New staff

In the end about two-thirds of this group left the school. The unions - recognising the seriousness of the school's situation - were not obstructive.

Those who showed improvement stayed on with the other, highly regarded, staff. Twenty-four new teachers joined the school this term.

Their task won't be easy. Establishing discipline and raising expectations will be the first job.

Walking around the school it was clear that the pupils' attention could easily be distracted. Their low self-esteem and confidence showed but they were interested by, and pleasant to, visitors.

Senior management clearly has to expend a lot of energy just keeping things orderly.

But where I saw good teaching, pupils were attentive.

Honesty

As the Ofsted inspectors noted in 2003, pupils "responded well to good teaching and purposeful activity".

However, where teaching was weak, they did not settle to work and, sometimes, became "noisy, rude and confrontational".

I hope Ramsgate School can climb out of its recent spiral of decline. By facing up to its problems with clear-eyed honesty, it must have a chance.

The pupils I spoke to were nice kids. Their confidence was dented but they hadn't given up. They were touchingly hopeful that things would improve.

They deserve a better chance than has been offered to them for the past few years.

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