Community: Heading for Success
Queensbridge School has just been declared ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. It’s an achievement, that Head Teacher Tim Boyes is rightly very proud of, particularly given the challenging situation that he faced when he first arrived at the school ten years ago. “If we’d been inspected in 2003,” he explains, “we would have failed and gone into special measures. As it was, we were inspected in 2004, a term after I arrived, and just scraped through as ‘satisfactory’.” Despite it’s location, nestled comfortably between the cosy, middle class boroughs of Moseley and Kings Heath, Queensbridge School is surprisingly mixed. It has a large proportion of students from minority ethnic backgrounds, many of whom speak English as a second language. A high number of the students qualify for free school meals, and there are an above average number of students with disabilities and special educational needs. Taking the school from a C- to an A+ has been a long process involving radical change acros...