Headteacher hits back at Ofsted criticism of Northamptonshire secondary school

The headteacher of a Northamptonshire secondary school says a recent Ofsted report does not reflect the progress made by staff and pupils in the past two years.

A report of a visit by Ofsted inspector Daniel Burton to Campion School in Bugbrooke in September states the school is not improving quickly enough due to a high turnover of staff,

A total of 27 teachers have left the school since February after it was judged to be in the ‘requires improvement’ category.

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Mr Burton said a number of pupils had complained that the toilet facilities are “dirty and poorly maintained.”

However, headteacher Claire Whitmore said the Ofsted inspector had not actually gone into the toilet himself and was relying on the accounts of pupils who had not been in the cubicles since they were refurbished during the Summer holidays.

Mrs Whitmore said: “All toilets were deep cleaned, painted and provided with new seats and toilet roll dispensers.

“We have also introduced a regular checking system throughout the school day to monitor carefully our toilet standards.

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“Our toilet blocks are old (some approaching 50 years) and therefore whilst the decoration has improved them considerably, there is a planned rolling programme of refurbishment that begins later this year.”

The headteacher said all the vinyl corridor floors had been re-coated and all stairwells and corridors painted.

In response to the criticism about the high staff turnover, Mrs Whitmore said she had inherited a school that was “over-staffed” in 2014 and has been forced to make £850,000 worth of savings, 10 per cent of the school’s income, to balance the books.

She said: “The Ofsted monitoring visit recognised that we have made some excellent appointments amidst the national teaching recruitment crisis and that we are now in a strong position moving forwards.

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“Do we need to improve further? Yes - we will never become complacent and have robust plans in place to sustain constant improvement both in the quality of education and the learning environment we provide for our students and colleagues.”

Mrs Whitmore said the school had also achieved its best set of A level results since 2010 this year.