By Gavin Mackintosh-
Education watchdog, Ofsted, has been forced to conduct an emergency inspection of England’s biggest free school after a video showing a brawl between five students in the canteen was circulated on social media.
Officials from the education watchdog paid an unannounced visit to Northampton International Academy (NIA) on Monday over behaviour and safeguarding issues, following complaints from ma numerous complaints from parents about terrible behaviour in the school.
Ofsted, which had rated the school’s safeguarding as “effective” during their last inspection in June despite their findings of “serious failings” the year before, have been left seeming incompetent in the wake of the latest mayhem in the school. The school had flaunted Ofcom’s now questionable findings on its website.
The report of the June visit stated the school was effective because leaders “restructured staffing to increase the capacity for safeguarding”.
However, it added that the school authorities had failed to take effective action in maintaining high standards of behaviour and attitudes. The report pointed out that pupils said staff did not deal with bullying “swiftly enough” and they sometimes had to raise concerns a second time “in order to be taken seriously”.
Critics of the regulator say its system is inherently weak because they often give schools advance notice of their visit, allowing them to potentially prepare their pupils for the visit in advance.
Such preparations can give a unrepresentative picture of pupil’s behaviour, in the process distorting a reliable report about the issues they have assessed. The regulator has been criticized for adopting a relatively soft stance on behavioural problems in schools, as its appraisals on schools generally either praises the behaviour of pupils or points out failings in good behaviour, with very limited proactive or competent recommendations for effective transformation in the bad behaviour of pupils in certain schools.
Ofcom’s team have themselves been caught behaving badly after this publication challenged them to justify their criticism of a school with a zero tolerance policy behaviour as ”too strict”. The character of adults usually have their roots at home and at school because children take their unchecked habits to adult life, and many times, the workplace.
A tiktok video of pupils fighting was once shared on Instagram and facebook, leading to many parents being shocked and horrified by its contents. The footage depicts staff struggling to keep the attackers separate from the victims, while hundreds of pupils cheer on the misbehaving students.
TikTok claimed it did “not tolerate violence on our platform and have removed the videos in question”.
An NIA spokesperson told the Eye Of Media.Com incident had been investigated and “appropriate support, sanctions, and restorative actions have been undertaken”.
However, the school declined to state exactly what those measures were.
NIA said unauthorised social media accounts created by students was a national problem. It would welcome any measures taken by social media companies to address it.
The school which accepts SEND pupils(people with behavioural problems) added that its students hailed from different nationalities, including, Polish, Romanian, Somalian, and that it had a school policy that seeks to address issues of misbehaviour.
Three pupils from the school told this publication that name calling, teasing and racism, were some of the problems that cause fights. Pupils chatting up girlfriends of their fellow students or saying negative things about them was another problem that leads to fights in the school.
Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the school leaders’ union ASCL, said posting school fights online was “another unfortunate feature of the digital age”. Schools then had to deal with the aftermath as well as the incident, he said.
Tom Bennett, the government behaviour tsar, said that a school in which pupils felt they could “kick off en-masse in front of teachers and supervisors…needs to think carefully and deeply about how it communicates what is and isn’t acceptable”. The school said it had “robust policies around behaviour that are followed when required”.
However, an Ofsted monitoring visit in December 2020 found vulnerable pupils at the free school were put at risk because stretched staff had “too many responsibilities” to carry out safeguarding duties.
A follow-up visit in June ruled it effective after leaders “estructured staffing to increase the capacity for safeguarding”.
A TikTok account called “highschoolfights19” that showed fights in UK schools had more than 1,000 views. The “schoolfightsmessy” account, which showcased brawls in many countries, had more than 200,000 views.
TikTok claimed it did “not tolerate violence on our platform and have removed the videos in question”.