Ofsted scrapping headline gradings came as a "disappointment" to one Watford school, which expects an imminent inspection to find major improvement.
Sam Fox took over as principal at Future Academies in September 2023, after its second ‘requires improvement’ report in a row was published during the previous academic year.
A monitoring visit this April confirmed progress had been made, but as his second year at the Horseshoe Lane school gets under way, Mr Fox said he wants to move on from a focus on 'improvement' to celebrating its successes.
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“There has been quite a lot in the past about the school improving but what we want to get across is that this is a school to be proud of now and I’m sure Ofsted will confirm that,” he said.
“The school has a history - we can all read the Ofsted report - but, genuinely, right now I believe this to be a 'good' school.”
Another inspection is apparently likely to take place in the next month or so, but it will not have a single-phrase judgement after the government ended the practice on September 2. Instead, it will have its grade broken down into the previously inspected categories – of which three were ‘requires improvement’ and two were ‘good’ at the last inspection in 2022.
The principal said that news “was a disappointment to us” as Future Academies would have been confident of a 'good' rating, but he is sure that the category-based report will still show the results of its hard work.
“High standards” was a phrase the 42-year-old, who joined the school after a previous headteacher role in Cambridge, was keen to emphasise.
Raising standards in areas such as teaching, behaviour, and uniform has apparently led to Results Day joy over the summer, and created an environment students feel they can be proud of as something they “own” themselves.
Mr Fox described how emphasising what appear to be small details (shaking hands with staff on arrival, never walking on the grass) create values such as “never taking a shortcut at the expense of your community”.
The keen runner, who has taken on 100k running challenges, says he has dedicated his career to addressing educational inequalities. His role at Future Academies particularly interested him as he wanted to help transform the reputation from ‘the school that isn’t the grammar school’.
“We want pupils to come to this school because we deliver the very highest standards of education and this is the strongest school,” he said, adding that after a year he is already sure it is a school to be proud of.
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