An OUTSTANDING journey and validation of a fool’s hope

Surely you’ve heard by now… ESA has only gone and done it… We’ve been judged as OUTSTANDING in every category by Ofsted! We are thoroughly elated - we were also surprisingly moved.

Sure, it was what we were aiming for. We’ve known for a while that ESA is special and pioneering. Indeed, there are a number of ways in which our curriculum and the learning culture here are fully world class, yet for all my vision, belief and passion for this place and what we’re up to, I was still unexpectedly moved to tears when the glowing judgements rolled in. In fact, all of my senior team, two governors and a number of the staff also shed tears following those five ‘outstanding’ declarations.

Rather embarrassingly, this is not the first time I have cried in front of Ofsted. I cried out of sheer frustration and defeat in 2017 when I tried with heroic levels of determination to make an Ofsted team recognise the strength of ESA only to be told again that the school required improvement. In 2019 ESA was judged to be good, which was better, but again I felt that the school had not been fully understood and that much of the magic happening here was being missed and under appreciated. You see, the Ofsted experience is severe. Those outside of education are often flabbergasted by the weight, pressure and stress caused to a school community by the emotionally intense process of Ofsted inspection. There are the obvious and commonly understood reasons for this… it’s only 2 and a bit days yet the judgements last for 5 years. Negative judgements impact on reputation so powerfully that it can reduce your school roll, which in turn reduces your financial income and thereby creates further practical challenges for the school. Pride and morale decrease leading to teacher recruitment challenges and in turn this can cause student behaviour issues and the downward spiral can be very hard to reverse. However, these practical implications are not the primary reasons for the level of distress that an inspection can induce. There are more powerful reasons for the emotional pain and stress of Ofsted and these are less practical.

You see, working with young people is personal. Unlike many occupations, education is still utterly vocational, it is relational and emotionally invested. School staff care in a truly personal and emotional way about their work. They love the children they care for, support and teach, they feel responsibility for them acutely and their own identity as good, moral and capable people is connected to their interaction with, and connection to these vital, blossoming and becoming young people. And all that nurturing and challenging care; all that vision and inspiring, listening and encouraging; all that planning and holding, monitoring and intervening; all that sensitivity and consideration, empathy and discipline; all that hoping and helping; all that love is judged in 2 and half days. How awful.

So it has to go well because it’s just too personally demoralising if it doesn’t. That’s why it matters so much. For us at ESA, it has seemed to matter even more than at many other schools I’ve worked at because we are a different type of school… we are up to something mould breaking. Our curriculum is specialist and our cohort is unique. We don’t compare easily to other schools as we do not fit the orthodoxy of traditional education. We are a disruption to the standardised school system, we’re often low down on the achievement league tables - our achievement data is out of kilter with the norm and often disregarded so we get missed or omitted from the winners column in our frankly unequal system of inspection and judgement. Not this time.

I have faith in what we are doing here and I am certain of the impact of our approach to creative education and training, but I had started to consider the idea of ESA achieving an outstanding judgement from Ofsted to be ‘a fool’s hope’. Maybe we should just settle for good - maybe that’s the best on offer in this system of traditional, standardised educational orthodoxy.

But creative crafts people cannot help themselves… we are wired to try and deliver the best possible artwork, and so we prepared and approached the Ofsted inspection with rigorous evidence of what makes ESA exceptional and we proudly presented the innovative practice we have developed here and we showcased our talented young people and our supportive industry partners and our ambitious creative curriculum and we, once again, invested our foolish hope that this might be recognised, but all the time we feared that we might once again be snubbed.

And so when it was recognised and in such glowing terms, I could not help but leak a tear or two. It was a validation of all those brave decisions, all that risky and daring vision. ESA had been seen as outstanding, not in spite of our unique and disruptive innovation, but because of it. Our commitment to the previously disengaged young person; our decision to prioritise character development alongside academic achievement; our choice to focus on a vocational and applied arts curriculum, even though it omitted us from national league tables; our insistence that industry standards matter more than classroom compliance and that unconditionally positive relationships supersede rules or sanctions - these ideas had won through and demonstrated outstanding education in every category. The recognition of those risky decisions was wonderful, the validation of our values as a creative learning community was such an affirmation. It was enough to induce some happy tears.

“Great stories are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are limited by their own orthodoxy. Great stories are written by people who are not frightened.”  [George Orwell]

For now, we are enjoying it. First, we let it sink in. We add this achievement to those other milestones - becoming a platinum ArtsMark school, becoming certified as a UK Centre of Screen Excellence, identified for National Excellence by Challenge Partners, winning at the International Film Festival, Outstanding judgements in every Ofsted category.

Then we start dreaming afresh. National advocacy for cultural education, innovating creative industry apprenticeships, leading in re-engagement curriculum development, community arts outreach and even better achievements to boost the life chances and competitive edge for all ESA graduates, alumni partnerships programme and support for independent production to supercharge our creative economy… the ideas are already percolating and new foolish hopes are piling up like kindling ready for the flame.

Outstanding.