The school where teachers are so scared they’ve gone on STRIKE: Parents and staff reveal the horror of facing racial abuse, threats of sexual assault against female teachers, a warning one would have her throat cut and gang fights galore

The horrors the member of staff known as Lisa faces when she enters her place of work are legion.

Racial slurs and threats of violence, sexual assault and even death are routine.

Chairs and tables are hurled around, and intimidation is rife: not long ago, someone told her they’d cut her throat, one of several terrifying threats she has received in recent months.

Where on earth could she be employed, you might ask, to face such a level of risk. A prison? A psychiatric ward?

Astonishingly, the answer is a school, in this case a comprehensive on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent where, as the Mail revealed last week, conditions are reportedly so bad that around 20 teachers went on strike, forcing it to close.

Protestors outside the Oasis Academy on the Isle of Sheppey, which saw 20 teachers go on strike due to poor working conditions and abuse

Teachers have reported being pushed and shoved by children, chairs thrown and racial abuse to black members of staff

Ofsted’s outgoing chief executive Amanda Spielman said in her final annual report that disruptive pupil behaviour and absenteeism are becoming more commonplace

Their protest was not about pay, but conditions — and specifically the fear which engulfs them and many of their pupils each time they walk into the school.

‘We’ve had enough,’ as Lisa — who doesn’t want to give her surname — puts it. ‘We are collectively striking because there have been too many incidents of violence and threats of violence against staff.

‘We have had chairs thrown; been pushed and shoved… physically assaulted. We have the n-word used on a regular basis to our black teachers.’

These are children remember — many as young as 11 or 12.

Little wonder that last week, Oasis Academy in Sheerness found itself the subject of newspaper headlines pondering whether it might be the worst school in Britain — a title for which, as one online commentator suggested, there is stiff competition.

The crisis at Oasis Academy coincides with the release of school watchdog Ofsted’s annual report. In her final report as its chief, Amanda Spielman, stated that absenteeism and disruptive pupil behaviour is becoming more commonplace. She also warned that secondary schools are plagued by a growing number of children playing ‘internal truancy’, where they wander corridors and hang out in toilets instead of going to lessons.

The walk-out in Kent is believed to be the first time teachers in England have gone on strike because of the fear of pupil behaviour (last month their peers at Caldicot Secondary School in Monmouthshire, Wales, walked out over three days due to what they called the ‘violent and aggressive behaviour’ of some pupils).

An underlying theme of the strike action in Kent — a ‘last resort’ — is also the threat of violence from pupils, following four physical assaults in the past two weeks alone, the Mail has learned.

They range from threats of sexual violence against female staff and gang fights, to large groups of children attacking one student, and pupils throwing tables and chairs at staff.

How did it get so bad? In truth, the school — rated inadequate in four categories by Ofsted when they visited last year and reported on unsafe pupils and ‘rife bad behaviour’ — has been in trouble for a long time, and various attempts to turn it around — including a multi-million-pound investment in school infrastructure — have failed to make an impact.

The reasons why are complex, although some of the roots undoubtedly lie in a difficult mix of social deprivation, well-intentioned but ultimately futile overhauls and endless staff turnover, which has served only to further estrange pupils, parents and teachers.

The Isle of Sheppey was found to be in the top ten most deprived areas in the country when the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its index of what it called ‘multiple deprivation’ earlier this year.

Two sites in Sheerness used to host two separate schools — Cheyne Middle School and Minster College — which merged in 2009 to become The Isle of Sheppey Academy.

Performance was dire, although by March 2013 its inadequate Ofsted report had been upgraded to ‘Requires Improvement’.

Six months later, a dynamic young head was brought in by the Oasis Trust group of academies, who’d taken over the school and renamed it the Oasis Academy Isle of Sheppey. 

David Millar, then just 36, had spent eight years transforming a London school, but knew he had a tough job ahead of him: at a leadership conference a few months after he began his tenure, he revealed that Department for Education officials had told him their visit in November 2013 was their ‘worst ever’ to a school, with high levels of inadequate teaching.

That much was already clear from the statistics: the previous year fewer than a quarter of pupils had gained five GCSEs at grades A-C, including in English and maths, and one in six regularly didn’t turn up at all or walked out during the school day.

Mr Millar professed himself baffled by a multi-million pound spend that had made the school entirely open plan.

‘Open-plan classrooms can work in some instances, but when they are the only main spaces you have and they have to be used at once with different year groups and subjects going on with no barrier between them, it’s just not workable,’ he said.

He received £2 million in funding to restore traditional classrooms, but pointed out that the school had ‘terribly low literacy levels’ and ‘social, cultural, economic and aspirational poverty’ of a kind he had never come across before, even in London.

Oasis Academy – rated inadequate in four categories by Ofsted when they visited last year and reported on unsafe pupils and ‘rife bad behaviour’ — has been in trouble for a long time

Millar certainly tried his best to restore order, excluding more than 270 pupils in the first term, and shedding dozens of lacklustre teachers, while appealing for ambitious new ones to help him improve the school.

‘Recruitment is a massive problem,’ he admitted. Ultimately, that issue extended to himself: Millar left three years after he arrived, saying he had been offered a promotion closer to his home, leaving two more heads to follow before the arrival in autumn 2021 of current head Andy Booth.

In his welcome letter, Booth wrote of the ‘exciting journey’ ahead and the ‘high expectations’ of the senior leadership teams over pupil conduct and work ethic.

Yet within a year came the damning 2022 ‘inadequate’ Ofsted report, which found that more than half of pupils did not attend regularly and too many pupils felt ‘unsafe’.

‘Some pupils told us they ‘have had enough’ of being jostled and hurt in corridors or verbally abused,’ the report stated.

It also said inspectors found pupils using ‘foul, homophobic, racist and sexist language’ and exchanging nude pictures without understanding the legal implications.

They also cited ‘rife’ vandalism, offensive graffiti, poor behaviour and bad language.

There was one glimmer of hope: the report concluded that staff ‘feel that the school is heading in the right direction’.

A year later it seems that is no longer the case, given the eyewitness testimony of Lisa, who last week spoke about the daily dramas she and her colleagues face. ‘We have situations where hordes of children run after one child to beat them up,’ she told the KentOnline news site. ‘Constantly being called the c-word, constantly being told to eff off. The kids are out in the corridors, refusing to come into classrooms.

‘They’re kicking the doors in so they come off their hinges in order to either run around like maniacs in classrooms they’re not supposed to be in… or beat up a student or threaten a teacher.

‘You ask someone to stand in line, you get threatened with death. It happens on a daily basis. On an hourly basis. There’s probably about 50 students in each year group who constantly do this.

‘The sad thing is that there are some gorgeous children, and their learning and their safety is being affected by this.’

That view is shared by parents the Mail spoke to when we visited the school, many of whom, while expressing some sympathy for the teachers, believed the school had all but given up trying to instil discipline.

None wished to be named, and some of them say they are afraid to send their children there. ‘We don’t know how to keep him safe at school,’ said the father of one 11-year-old pupil.

‘He started in September and has been the victim of at least ten attacks by pupils. Most of these have happened in class, most have been witnessed, and only a small number have been acted upon.’

The parent revealed that on one occasion a child had entered his son’s classroom and head-butted him. They had then left class but came back five minutes later and punched his son. ‘Nothing was done,’ he says. Another parent, a mum called Louise, said her own children repeatedly told her about the chaos at the school.

‘My youngest refused to go to his classes because the children from Year 8 kept coming into his lesson,’ she says. ‘He told me the older children were told to leave on multiple occasions, but they’re loud and don’t listen.

‘A few weeks ago I was told there was a fight, and the kids made a sort of blockade and wouldn’t let the teachers get through to break it up. It is quite frightening to see what the children do to each other — it’s almost savage.’

Another parent said her daughter — who has now left the school — could only get any work done by wearing earphones in class.

‘She used to get in trouble for it, but she wore them because she wanted to concentrate,’ the parent said. ‘She used to ring me up during class and hold her mobile out and say, ‘This is my English lesson’, and it would be like a zoo. There was so much shouting, screaming and disruption.

‘Why isn’t someone dealing with these children?’

Members of the National Education Union (NEU) on a picket line outside Oasis Academy in a dispute over pay in July

This was the criticism levelled by a couple who live near the school and say their lives have been blighted by pupils’ behaviour.

‘We’ve lived here for over ten years, and we’ve had numerous incidents in the front garden with kids fighting,’ said the female owner, who also asked not to be named. ‘We’ve had our stained-glass windows smashed, and stuff thrown into the garden, like bottles and sandwiches.

‘We’ve had kids smoking weed and selling vapes outside. We’ve phoned the school numerous times, but they’re not interested. It’s horrible living here. We can’t wait for summer when the children are on their six-week holidays.’

Her husband points out that teachers do little to intervene if they are leaving the school and see pupils gather for one of their frequent fights.

‘If someone is going to have a fight, this is where they congregate, and the teachers won’t do anything. They come out and stand at the school gate and say ‘see you later’,’ he says.

Not everyone blames lack of discipline in the classroom however, with one mother of a year 9 pupil pointing out that parents are also culpable.

‘I feel sorry for the teachers,’ she says. ‘They have no power to do anything with disruptive children. Some of these children should not be in that school because of their behaviour — if parents can’t control their children what do they expect? That the teachers will be able to control them?

‘The school needs to get a grip on the behaviour, and I feel sorry for the kids who are getting bullied, but discipline starts at home.’

It should be said that not everyone the Mail spoke to is unhappy. Several parents said they had no complaints, with one adding that there was undeniably a ‘bad element’ who caused disruption, but his son was happy and thriving.

Perhaps most pertinently, other than home-schooling, parents do not feel they have a choice.

‘You go from primary school to either of the two sites and that’s it,’ as one father puts it.

But this may yet change: in February, following that damning Ofsted report last year, the Department for Education confirmed that two new trusts — Leigh Academies Trust and EKC Schools Trust — would take over, splitting the school into two new schools, one of which would have a more academic focus, while the other would offer more vocational training.

But this will not happen until September of next year, and has done little to mollify members of staff who are planning five more strike days in the next couple of months — the next is tomorrow.

‘Educators and pupils have a right to be safe at school,’ Maria Fawcett, South East Regional Secretary for the National Educators’ Union, told the Mail.

‘Effective behaviour management in the classroom is essential for a good learning environment.

‘Sadly, our members feel this is not the case at Oasis Sheppey Academy, despite some progress being made in recent days. Critical to the resolution of the dispute will be the acceptance, by the employer, that there needs to be a zero-tolerance approach to assaults and threat of assaults against pupils and teachers.’

An empty classroom at Oasis Academy, which is due to be split into two new schools run by two new trusts

Among their requests is a ‘fixed exclusion tariff’ of ten days for any pupil who assaults, or threatens to assault, a member of staff.

Oasis Academy did not respond to requests for comment from the Mail, although last week it told a local newspaper that providing a ‘high-quality education’ was a ‘top priority’, and it was ‘committed to working positively with staff representatives to try to avoid any future disruption and to ensure that Oasis Academy Isle of Sheppey is a school where everyone can thrive.’

On the picket line, Lisa and her colleagues can only hope that this is not just empty rhetoric. ‘We’re desperately in need of someone to get a grip of this place and allow our students to learn,’ she says. ‘Which is what we’re here for.’

Additional reporting by Stephanie Condron.

Source: Read Full Article