Behind the Inspection Rating: Special school sets the bar high
Tristan Donovan
Monday, May 11, 2015
Wirral Hospitals School, Claughton - Special school inspection - November 2014.
Derek Kitchin, the head of Wirral Hospitals School, is always on call. He might have spent the Easter break in Spain, but he and the rest of the school's senior leaders are always just an email or text away should their pupils need them.
"We're probably the only school that has a helpline for kids," he says. "It's a 24-hour, 52-weeks-a-year helpline that's there as a last resort. We don't stop what we're doing when we're on holiday. When I got one of those messages while in Spain, I signposted it very quickly to social services."
The helpline is just one part of the school's efforts to protect its students, who primarily have emotional and mental health issues that prevent them going to mainstream school such as autism, eating disorders or self-harm.
The focus on safeguarding starts in recruitment. Instead of asking prospective staff what they would do should a child disclose abuse, the school quizzes them about what they personally can do to safeguard pupils. These efforts haven't gone unnoticed. Ofsted's latest inspection calls the school's safeguarding work "outstanding".
But safeguarding isn't the only area in which this hospital school - which moved from a "good" to "outstanding" rating - excels.
Key to the improvement, said Ofsted, is the school's "uncompromising" stance on boosting attainment. "We've moved from just being a really nurturing place with no real rigor to a school where we do everything we can to help students get over the line in English and maths with a C as a minimum," says Kitchin.
Monitoring pupil progress lies at the heart of this says deputy head Jo Burton. "Close monitoring is a way of focusing on how we can help the children grow their confidence and self-esteem," she says. "There is nothing that helps those things more than being successful."
The results are impressive. "Last year 100 per cent of our young people gained offers of places in further education or apprenticeships or employment," says Burton.
Not that the change was easy. "There was a bit of 'I can't believe you are talking this language, you will drive the children out'," says Kitchin. "But the opposite has happened. A demanding curriculum has been the best therapy for them."
A rise in attendance levels from 60 per cent five years ago to almost 90 per cent today is further testament to the success of the new approach, and in large part thanks to the school's learning mentors, who provide work to children when they can't come on site and then follow it up.
It also helps that Kitchin runs Wirral's home education service: "If I wasn't running the home education service and Hospital School together, every time one of my kids disappeared I'd be looking at a long referral process, but because I'm the gatekeeper for both services that doesn't happen."
The close ties with Wirral Council are vital, adds Kitchin, who stopped plans to move the school out of council control. "I fought that because I believe in the quality of Wirral Council, but also because our relationships are fantastic. I can pick up the phone any day to one of the senior leaders or the director there and get support and advice and I do the same for them."
FACT FILE
- Name: Wirral Hospitals School
- Location: Claughton, Wirral
- Description: Wirral Hospitals School offers full-time education to 11- to 16-year-old boys and girls at its main campus as well as individual tuition to children aged five to 16 who are in-patients at Arrow Park Hospital. The students who attend the school at its main campus have mental and physical problems that prevents their progress in mainstream school, including depression, self-harm, autism spectrum conditions, eating disorders, and social and communication difficulties.
- Number of children: 96 students
- Ofsted reference number: 105139
HELPFUL HINTS
Education is an entitlement. "Nurture and everything else is great, lovely and required, but the focus has got to be on academic achievement," says Derek Kitchin, head teacher at Wirral Hospitals School. "Even if children are not well enough to go onto sixth-form college or a vocational course, at some point in their lives someone is going to ask them for their maths and English."
Be indispensable. Hospital schools should make themselves indispensable by using their expertise to help the wider education system, says Kitchin. Wirral Hospitals School, for example, advises Wirral primary schools on working with children with mental health issues.
Rewards work. As part of its wider efforts to improve pupils' attendance, Wirral Hospitals School offers rewards, such as £10 supermarket vouchers or chocolates, to students who achieve 100 per cent attendance each half term. "The kids really buy into that," says Kitchin. "Our mantra is no matter how ill you feel in terms of mental health, get your attendance mark. So get in and get the support. Then we can look at building it up from there to lessons in maths or English."