North West London

THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW Highlighting best practice

Earlham Primary School

Education is building the future

W hen Daniel Kerbel became head teacher of Earlham Primary School, Wood Green, in 2015, he took on the heady task of turning around an institution that was struggling to attain the basic outcomes necessary for pupils’ futures. After two years of hard work, Daniel and his team have managed to improve the lives of their students, as evidenced through the school’s rising Ofsted rating, and a sensation of hope now permeates throughout. Daniel writes here of the challenges he has faced and provides a step-by-step strategy on raising educational standards for schools in the future. The biggest landmark in our recent history has been achieving a “good” Ofsted rating in April 2017. The school had been graded “inadequate” in 2012 by Ofsted, and had been subsequently revisited and graded “requires improvement” in 2013 and 2015. Decisive action was required to get the school a “good” grading. One may wonder what the leadership’s approach to turning the school around was, and how we’ll face future challenges. I write this from the perspective of head teacher, and presented here are the ideas, strategies and tactics that the school community and I enacted to save Earlham Primary School. I arrived in September 2015, shortly after the third Ofsted inspection had left the school with a “requires improvement” grade. When I arrived, the sense in the school was one of relief at having survived the inspection. This was the first challenge – as Her Majesty’s Inspector, visiting in October, made clear, not getting an “inadequate” rating was not cause for celebration!

REPORT CARD Earlham Primary School » » Head teacher: Daniel Kerbel » » Founded in 2007 » » Based in Wood Green, Haringey » » Type of school: Maintained community school » » No. of pupils: 375 » » No. of staff: 53 » » In 2017, Earlham Primary held pupil school elections, staffed by a year 1 team of five pupils, winning the campaign on a platform of “a desk for each child” and a “sweeter school” – they governed for one day with ice lollies for all » » www.earlhamprimary.com

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