Gwendolen1

HollandforLife I think your post sums up how many people feel. Overall, I want my children to go to a school whose lived values include integrity and transparency. It would have been much better for the school to be up front & say, 'Our results in 2012 are a disappointment; they include some unfortunate marking in English which we hope to challenge; but we have already worked hard to understand what went wrong, to make sure that it's just a blip and not a trend'. To most parents this would indicate bold leadership. The other thing that has just felt 'weird' is the enormous gap between the school's own explicit rhetoric at open days: "This is the best school that any child could come to" (reiterated by the head, parents and children who presented formally on the day I went to) and the results (in any year, not just last year). To me this just gives a sense of unreality, of a school that doesn't have a feel for (or mind) that there's a reality gap. Most parents don't need to feel their child goes to the BEST school in the world. But for me the integrity and honesty thing IS important. How can you improve if your narrative is telling you you are better than everyone else already? HOWEVER, notwithstanding the above, for parents whose children are at Kingsdale (or might be going) I would encourage them not to panic. Of course Kingsdale has got some great staff, and lots of other continuing strengths. And with all the scrutiny they will be working their socks off to improve - that's always a good time to join a school. (With results under the 40% threshold they will I think be on DfE's 'monitoring list' which means more [not necessarily helpful IMHO!] scrutiny from on high). Ofsted is always a very flawed process*, but I am sure we can trust that the strengths Ofsted observed at Kingsdale were genuine. I would hope that Kingsdale's governors would be pressing for evidence of sustainable improvements (ie constant upwards trend in basic quality of teaching and learning) not just jumping through hoops to squeeze the statistics up. All schools go up and down - look at the research I linked to above which showed that many schools at top of league tables will be at the bottom 7 years later (and vice versa). *I actually think Kingsdale were pretty lucky to get away with a Good, given Michael Gove's (mistaken IMHO) view that schools should only get 'Good' if they have results that are above national average

The huge dip in Kingsdale's results is concerning, especially as before resits they dipped below the gov floor target of 40% A*-C with maths and English, tho it's worth bearing in mind that ALL schools' results can shift rapidly over a few years (FWIW here is a very interesting piece of research which shows how much we should take league table positioning with a pinch of salt https://cerp.aqa.org.uk/perspectives/school-league-tables-revealing-or-misleading) However, my impression of the school has been significantly adversely affected by its refusal to release the 2012 results to prospective parents last term. I rang the school and asked directly for results and was told they weren't being released due to remarking after the English GCSE fiasco. I felt at the time this was ridiculous: many schools were affected by remarking of English. It now feels that Kingsdale were hiding their very disappointing results. Parents have had to make choices about the school for their child without having all the information they wanted at their fingertips. I do not think an Academy should be allowed to behave in that way. Regardless of new legal status of 'independent' academies, parents view schools in a local system and need equal access to information across that system in order to make informed decisions. I don't think hiding that information has presented Kingsdale in a good light.