Friarage School Branded “Inadequate”

Friarage Community Primary School in Castle Ward/Division has been branded “Inadequate” by Ofsted, the UK Government’s Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills.

The word on the street from Johnny the shoeshine guy is that standards have been slipping at Friarage because of language difficulties between Eastern European children and Friarage teachers because English is not their first language. I’m sure a UK Govt push to bring in foreign born teachers can’t be far away!

Friarage is apparently so short of money that kids have been asked to bring their own toilet rolls to school.

The OFSTED report made for grim reading with the finger pointed squarely at the Friarage governors.

Over time, leaders, including governors, have failed to halt the steep decline in the quality of education the school provides.

Leaders and governors have not ensured that all pupils receive an acceptable quality of education.

Governors are loyal supporters of the school. However, over time they have not held leaders to account for their actions to improve teaching and pupils’ outcomes.

The governing body has, in the past, too readily accepted leaders’ reasons for the consistently low outcomes achieved by pupils across key stage 2.

Governors know where improvements are needed in the school and have recently undertaken a review of governance to improve their skills. They are beginning to challenge leaders about the school’s performance, but it is too soon to see the impact of this on the quality of education.

Basically, OFSTED say the governors didn’t know what they were doing and they need a lot of help.

Chair of the Board of Governors at Friarage is NYCC & SBC Councillor Janet Jefferson, approaching her 20th year at SBC. It seems you are never too long in the tooth to undergo a spot of public sector retraining.

Cllr Jefferson voted to give the Scarborough & Whitby Tories £4million to demolish the Futurist in 2016, but changed her mind in the run up to the 2017 County Council elections. The things people do for votes…

Cllr Jefferson was the subject of the first article I wrote about local government. Jefferson was in receipt of £500 per annum from NYCC and also £250 per annum from SBC for Broadband. Cheeky! The sum was never repaid.

Friarage might have a bit more money to spend on education of their pupils and provide them with toilet rolls if it didn’t waste taxpayer’s money sending staff on Stonewall LGBT Primary School courses to attain some daft accreditation to stick on their letterheads. At least wait until the kids are in their teens before bringing in drag queens to dole out career advice.