Scathing report on Walsall schools

The number of children at inadequate schools in Walsall is too high, says a damning new Ofsted report on the borough's education strategy.

The report said the council was not providing effective support for schools and the number of educational establishments of concern was not falling.

The borough's children's services chief Councillor Mohammed Arif said the council accepted the report and will use the findings to help accelerate the steps being taken to ensure all pupils were in a good or better school within two years.

Ofsted carries out periodic checks at local authorities to scrutinise their school improvement plans or strategies and visited Walsall Council due to concerns about the achievement of pupils in primary school and the low proportion of pupils at good or better schools.

Eleven schools have been rated inadequate and placed in special measures in the borough since last November.

But the report said that education standards in the borough's eight nursery schools were outstanding, and good or better in all its seven special schools.

Inspectors have said following their visit in June that the proportion of young pupils achieving average levels of attainment at the end of Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 was too low and improvements were not quick enough.

Ofsted also said that achievement for too many sixth form students was inadequate.

It said despite the efforts of the senior education officers and councillors to improve schools by offering offering more support to those that need it their strategy had not worked due to a catalogue of issues.

These include weak school leadership; no clear plan to improve leadership and governance and the strategy to implement the improvement plans not being fit for purpose.

It also said the authority does not know its schools well enough and as a result does not act quickly enough to pave the way for improvement.

Councillor Arif said: "We have been aware of many of the issues highlighted in the report and we would like to reassure residents, parents, pupils and staff that we are already addressing the recommendations."

The report stated: "The local authority fails to engage with all schools. For instance, a significant minority of schools do not share their most recent achievement data with the authority. This undermines its ability to bring about improvements."