St Ursula's Convent School

Pros

Colleagues in the staffroom are some of the kindest, most genuine, most supportive people I have ever worked with. In that regard, I was very lucky to have worked at St Ursula's. They have each other's backs and still have the collective memory of how the school should be managed in terms of strong and effective behaviour management which benefits staff and students alike and supports the once strong ethos and goof and effective teaching and learning.

Cons

Over the last few years, a change in head teacher (twice in quick succession) allowed SLT support of the school's behaviour management policies to completely collapse. Sanctions issued by teachers for poor student behaviour were rarely supported by SLT and those senior staff hid in their offices to avoid having to fulfill their responsibilities. One example of a student's conduct - repeated false accusations against male teachers for acts of violence in the classroom (in front of other students). Whilst these allegations were easily demonstrably false, there were no consequences for the student and her friends which supported these blatant lies. Teachers were forced to take time off through suspension or stress leave and made to feel like they were the root cause of the problem by SLT. This issue was exacerbated by the fact that SLT were too weak to deal with vexatious attitudes of the students' parents. The students in question had in previous years been issued fixed term exclusions for acts of violence against members of the public outside school and for poor conduct (including incidences of bullying their peers) in school. Despite the history of such behaviour among these individuals, the new successive head teachers and SLT allowed them to continue their harmful behaviour with absolute impunity. This is not the way in which a school founded on Catholic and Ursuline values should be permitted be managed. For want of a better word, it is criminal - and this is only the tip of the ice berg. At least the 2024 Ofsted report has graded them as Requires Improvement. If only the inspectors knew of what was hapenning until 2023, and what I premise still happens. Perhaps the Ofsted report wouldn't be so apologetic.