Displaying items by tag: Turner Schools

 The title quotation from the new Ofqual Regulator, Dr Jo Saxton, heads a profile of her contained in Schoolsweek last week. A few months ago, the same website also recorded a comment that  ‘In the past, being a close confidante and policy adviser to the secretary of state for education would be seen as a straightforward disqualification for a non-ministerial departmental role like this, but clearly the civil service recruitment panel and Gavin Williamson has taken a different view’, and so has had to walk a difficult path in focusing on her virtues. 

The profile begins with a reference to her role as CEO of Turner Schools, which she co-founded, and which is the subject of several critical articles on this site countering the many extravagant claims she has made for the academy Trust, as she sought the headlines with no semblance of hiding away in an attic.

Warwick Mansell, on his Education Uncovered website, looked extensively at this appointment, including Dr Saxton's 'impeccable' political connections as a qualification for the post. He also drew on several of my articles, to illustrate her unsuitability for the post.

The parliamentary Pre-Appointment Hearing for Dr Jo Saxton as Chief regulator of Ofqual covered many issues relating to the role but for Kent families, those relating to her leadership of Turner Schools between  2017 and 2020 were particularly relevant and illuminating. The questions posed about that leadership by the Labour MP, Kim Johnson were clearly based on my previous article about her appointment here. This looked objectively at Dr Saxton's performance as CEO and focused on three key themes I had raised: Finance, Discipline and the Haemorrhaging of Pupils, which I explore further below. Her performance began and ended with 'I am incredibly proud of the things that the team and I achieved at Turner Schools'.

Quote from Schoolsweek: 'In the past, being a policy adviser to the secretary of state would be seen as a straightforward disqualification for a non-ministerial departmental role like this'.

The comment below from Former FA SLT is well worth reading to understand the sentiments of those caught up in the issues created by Turner Schools at Folkestone Academy. 

My previous article about Dr Jo Saxton and her nomination as the preferred candidate to be the new chief regulator of Ofqual has clearly struck home at Turner Schools, with the Trust issuing a press release explicitly attempting to refute my evidence of its problems. Unfortunately, this is factually wrong on most points, which is strange as in his accompanying letter to staff the CEO warns that ‘disinformation and falsehoods are being spread about our schools’ (I have never seen any of this).

In particular, quoted data about school exclusions is wrong according to official KCC figures, whilst the statement about the number of pupils joining Folkestone Academy in September appears to be based on a false manipulation of the data to hide the fact that fewer families than ever before want to join the school, or else the school simply doesn't understand how the admission system works. 

The press release covers my themes about  GCSE performance, stability in leadership teams, and finance, all central to the concerns I expressed in the article. It also wrongly claims that a number of Folkestone schools had been failing for many years before Turner Schools took over. Whilst I remain unaware of any of the claimed disinformation or falsehoods being spread about Turner Schools, t am completely bewildered as to why the Trust seeks to go down this route. As pointed out before, I am always more than happy to make corrections to any factual errors in my articles if they are pointed out.

Updates: The entries on the third page, Other Trusts, are still being updated and extended, following enquiries, as this article is attracting considerable interest  (from headteachers?). I am now surveying all single academy Trust non-selective and primary academies,  with further details below.  

The website Education Uncovered has identified the full list of 183 English Academy Trust leaders receiving (earning?) more than £150,000 in salary for the school year 2018-19. This includes eight leaders who were working in Trusts running mainly Kent schools, including the scandalous increase of 33% for one leader up from £150,000 to £200,000 in twelve months and who then took early retirement at the end of the year. The Trusts are Aletheia Anglican Academies Trust, The John Wallis Church of England Academy; Kent Catholic Schools' Partnership; Leigh Academies Trust; Swale Academy Trust (2); Valley Invicta Trust (2).

I also look below at staff in five other Trusts which have academies in Kent or Medway, and several other Trusts of interest, including cases where well-paid leaders have now retired. 

The Education and Skills Funding Agency has been sending letters to academy trusts who have an executive salary above £150,000 or multiple salaries between £100,000 and £150,000 since 2017, asking them for justification of these payments. The website Schools Week has found few signs of any practical response to this attempt to hold pay back, certainly not amongst the Kent Trusts listed below.

Browsers can decide, from the descriptions below, whether the school leaders concerned provide value for money for their schools. 

For the last three and a half years, Turner Schools has been one of my most prolific themes for articles on this website, aided and abetted by its CEO and founder Dr Jo Saxton, whose passion for promoting the Trust (named after her grandmother) and making fantastical claims for its performance and future prospects was simply breathtaking. She departed the Trust in March, after just three years, to become a Political Adviser to Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State for Education, whose subsequent gaffe ridden career is well documented, but presumably is coincidental.

The EKC Group, which runs Folkestone College, has sensed an expansion opportunity and has opened the Folkestone Junior College this month. This offers a full-time alternative to the Turner Schools monopoly of non-selective education in Folkestone, in Years 10 and 11, surely a major challenge to the Trust.

Dr Saxton has now moved on to advise Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State for Education in March this year (see below) and Seamus Murphy, her successor as CEO, is wasting no time in making his mark on Turner Schools. Having arrived in April 2019, he is now on his fourth role in the Trust.

One of his early actions on taking on full responsibility has continued the Turner Schools tradition of creating a high turnover of senior staff, with the Executive Principal of the two Trust primary schools departing at very short notice on Friday last, after just one week of Term Six. Monday’s letter informing parents of the decision can be found by a link on Facebook but is well hidden. It is also very short on detail about Mrs Sowden-Mehta who has been at the school for three years, having been promoted twice. In spite of this success, she has very suddenly ‘decided to leave Turner Schools to pursue new opportunities’, a time-honoured phrase used to cover leaders who have been forced out of their schools. The previous Principal of Folkestone Academy has also recently vanished after first being demoted. 

Update July: Jo Swash, Vice Principal has left Folkestone Academy suddenly, my correspondent says'mysteriously'. When I checked this recently here, he was present in the photographs but has now gone, but is still present on the list of all staff, below. 

Update 11 April: If you wish to apply for the vacant post of Head of School at Folkestone Academy, you will find details here. The 84 point Job Description defining the post-holder's responsibilities shows that Turner Schools has not lost its touch for covering all the bases.    

Update: To add to Dr Saxton's Achievements, below, the number of families putting Folkestone Academy as their first choice school for 2020 has fallen yet again, from 153 in 2019 to 127 in 2020. 23 children, probably all from Folkestone, were allocated to the school, refusing to put it on their application form.

Dr Jo Saxton is leaving her post as co- founder and Chief Executive of Turner Schools, the small Academy Trust in Folkestone, but being paid one of the largest salaries in the country for a Trust of this size. Her departure comes after just three tumultuous and underachieving years and a big vision, along with a huge number of unfulfilled promises including for the two Folkestone secondary schools the fantasy claim: ‘both schools will outperform all schools in the south of England – excluding grammars - and provide “success without selection’.

She had already effectively thrown in the towel a year ago, when she appointed a new Deputy Chief Executive, now her successor, so that 'she could focus on curriculum matters, being the original reason she took on the Turner Schools post’, although I can find no other mention of this focus anywhere else.

The news of Dr Saxton's departure was contained in Kent Live published earlier today, 11^th March. I have never before received so many emails in half a day informing me of a news item in such a small time. None of them regret her departure.

The Turner Schools Annual Report to Companies House, posted on the final due date, 31^st January 2020 suggesting some difficulties in completion, continues the saga of well rewarded underperformance. CEO Dr Jo Saxton whose recent main focus has been on Curriculum across the four Turner Schools, was paid a salary of £149,783, conveniently just below the £150,000 level at which government looks askance. The salary is in return for running a small, struggling Academy Trust and is highest of the Kent Trusts I have found so far, excepting four which are large and successful. The Report works hard, as is usual for Turner Schools, on blaming its problems at Folkestone Academy on legacy issues despite the evidence that standards have only declined since it took over. Amongst other own goals: it also manages to excuse the failure of the two Turner primary schools to attract pupils, including Morehall with the highest vacancy rate in Kent; has run up a loan repayable to government of £1.3 million; and has two of its four schools running at a sizeable deficit.

In other news, Government has at last released a Free School Impact Assessment for Turner Free School carried out in 2018, looking at the likely effects its opening would have on neighbouring schools. The good news (??) according to the DfE was that there would be a Minimal Effect on Folkestone Academy in terms of recruitment, but a Moderate Effect on Astor College in Dover. For the Sixth Form there would be Moderate Effects felt by Canterbury College, East Kent College (which have now merged) and Hilderstone College. How much more wrong could government be! See below.

The following article may not be of direct interest to families but it identifies the chaos and machinations at the top of Turner Schools and as such I consider it is an important testimony. The consequences for schools operating under this chaotic level of leadership cannot be good.   

The mystery of the resignation of the Chairman of Directors and Founder of Turner Schools, Professor Carl Lygo, along with Dame Susan John and four other Directors continues to deepen in what appears to have been a meltdown amongst the Board of Directors back in  May. Amongst other developments below, the Trust has quietly announced the appointment of Mike Buchanan as the new Board Chairman in the middle of an article about building works, although completely forgetting to mention why another Chairman is needed, or to give any mention or credit anywhere to Professor Lygo, Dame Susan John, or Jenny King amongst others for their important contributions to the Trust.

Since I wrote my previous article, Folkestone Academy has had another set of poor GCSE results. Although it has improved on its record of awarding more than one in seven fixed term exclusions for the whole of Kent in 2017-18, the 2018-19 performance of being the third highest percentage in Kent is nothing to be proud of, nor are the high exclusion rates at Martello Primary and the Turner Free School. 2017-2018 had seen a mass exodus of staff, another large swathe going in July this year. Folkestone Academy has got through five headteachers since Turner Schools took over. Sixth form numbers have slumped, as has intake. The Trust has made multiple false claims about its ‘successes’ over the past two years to cover this record up. There is more to come before Christmas.