Former staff and parents of pupils at a Nottingham special school which saw its Ofsted rating fall have spoken out about what they say are failings by its parent charity.
Sutherland House School, in Sneinton, was rated as ‘outstanding’ by the Government inspectorate after visits in 2007 and 2011.
But this fell to ‘requires improvement’ after an inspection in October 2015.
With the body continuing to monitor the school, several former members of staff and parents have now spoken of widespread changes they say were instigated by its parent charity, Autism East Midlands.
They claim a change in direction led by the charity resulted in too many experienced members of staff leaving the school and less of a focus on individual needs, which they say was partly to blame for the fall in Ofsted rating.
The school, a specialist autism school on Bath Street, teaches children aged 5-19 with autism spectrum conditions, and has 94 places for students from across the East Midlands.
Autism East Midlands strongly rejects the allegations, acknowledging that a “number of staff have left”, but saying changes were made because numbers had become financially unsustainable.
It also insisted it has the right amount of staff to meet pupil’s needs properly.
Deborah Johnson was a teaching assistant at the school until she retired in September 2014. The school has since moved from operating across five sites to the current single base in Sneinton.
Ms Johnson said a raft of changes in her final two years led to a fall in the number of staff.
“There were a lot of changes, the main issue for me was at that particular time we had a lot of staff that were getting suspended.
“We were dealing with some very challenging students. It put a lot of pressure on the staff that were there at the time. We didn’t have enough staff to go on community visits [for example].”
She added: “The main thing I think is consistency. That was always the word that came up. It worked for us for a lot of years. We were losing staff and that made students very anxious.”
Following the October 2015 inspection Ofsted said in its report: “There is not enough consistently good teaching because leaders do not always monitor the quality of teaching and learning effectively”.
It also said a “lack of formal systems to support and challenge staff means that the quality of teaching, learning and assessment across the whole school is not as good as it could be”.
However, while the final rating was ‘requires improvement’ inspectors also praised some practices at the school, saying the “well-being of pupils and their families is the central driving force to all that the school does”.
In June 2016 inspectors returned to conduct a monitoring inspection, and said progress is being made.
The resulting report said: “Senior leaders and governors are taking effective action to tackle the areas requiring improvement identified at the recent section 5 inspection in order to become a good school.”
Between this follow-up and the 2015 inspection, the school had gone from running five different sites across Nottinghamshire to one, moving into its current Bath Street home.
The building is a former New College Nottingham (NCN) building which was bought for £1.235 million, before undergoing a £600,000 refit.
Sue Fox’s son Alex, 18, has attended the school since 2008. He has pathological demand avoidance, or PDA, which can manifest as a high level of anxiety when demands are placed on a person.
After flourishing at the school, Sue says her son’s progress has declined over the last 18 months.
“I’ve noticed a really big change in him,” she said.
“He wouldn’t get up for school in the mornings, [he was] nervous stressed, unhappy, not engaging with anything,” she added.
“He is worse because of school, not getting him to engage, not giving him things to do, that’s making his condition worse.
“He has tried mainstream school, we have tried mainstream school with him and he couldn’t cope.
“I believe it is the staff. They have got rid of a lot of the experienced staff, and [they] knew the children, what they were like and what’s needed.”
John Matthews’ son attended Sutherland House until three years ago.
“I would always totally highly recommend Sutherland House School. Now I would not put a child in it,” he said.
“I have been back to the school recently, and it’s flat. There’s nothing there. It’s not like visiting family and friends any more.”
One teacher, who was sacked from the school in September for gross misconduct, which she denied, also said she had seen significant change. She asked not to be named.
“It’s really difficult to explain without getting quite emotional about it,” she said.
“The children no longer were the centre of what we were providing. It was, in my opinion about doing the bare minimum with the minimum costs.”
In a lengthy statement, Autism East Midlands defended its running of Sutherland House, saying while it had been forced to reduce staffing levels, it was still able to provide a valuable specialist service to the right standard.
In a statement the charity said: “Our staffing costs were historically very high. At one time the costs of staffing within one of our schools ran as high as 94 per cent of the school’s budget. Therefore, whilst it is true that a number of staff have left, it was never sustainable to operate the school at the level of staffing that the school had increased to.
“It is in every school’s interest, but particularly those that deal with Autistic children to have the appropriate amount of staff. Staffing levels are dictated by the assessed needs of the individual children and agreed with the placing council.
“Despite recent reductions we still have the requisite amount of staff per pupil to meet assessed needs.”
It added: “As stated above, we were obliged to reduce the numbers of staff at the school in order that it remained a viable business, so we accept that there are lower numbers of staff (much as we would love to have the funds for more staff).
“In addition to which, whilst some staff have left over the last three years (as they would have in any organisation), we have not suffered a lower level of staff numbers than was needed at any point, and indeed we have always operated with more than the requisite number of staff for the number of children in our care.
“Whilst new staff, being new, have less experience with our children, it does not stand to reason that just because somebody is less experienced in our environment that they are not as good as long-serving staff. We have had no problems recruiting suitable staff and we provide very comprehensive training. We have the correct staffing to meet the assessed needs of the students in our care.
“Whilst very sad and damaging to the reputation of the school and morale of our dedicated staff team, it does not reflect the experience of students in our care. We have invested very significantly in the training of our staff over the last year and our new approach has led to a 75 per cent reduction in the use of physical intervention [with pupils] year on year.
“We would welcome a visit from Notts TV (who alerted us to this report only last Friday evening) and any other interested parties to see the excellent work that is undertaken on a daily basis.”
Ofsted declined to say when it will next visit the school to re-inspect it, as its policy is to keep inspections unannounced.
