'More work needed' at school in special measures

A Surrey secondary school where Ofsted said the use of racist and homophobic language had become normalised between pupils has been revisited by inspectors.

In a letter to the head teacher, published on Monday, inspectors said: "Leaders have made progress to improve the school, but more work is necessary for the school to no longer be judged as requiring special measures."

A monitoring visit took place in March after Sunbury Manor School, in Nursery Road, was rated "inadequate" in all areas by the watchdog in April 2024.

The school has been contacted for comment.

A school being placed in special measures means it is both failing to provide its pupils with an acceptable standard of education and not showing the capacity to make the improvements needed.

At the 2024 inspection, the report said prejudicial language had become the norm, and this had "allowed a culture of racist and homophobic 'banter' to develop" at the secondary school.

The school's headteacher, David Lee, said at the time the report was not "where we are, not who we are and not what we want to be identified as".

Mr Lee took up his post in June 2024, following the previous inspection.

Inspectors said in their letter to him: "Since then, you have strengthened the school's leadership capacity to enable you to focus on making the necessary improvements."

They added he had "quickly set out to improve pupils' experiences of school", "acted swiftly to improve the school's work around safeguarding" and that robust strategies had been put in place to tackle incidents of discriminatory behaviour.

A new behaviour policy had been introduced that pupils understood, inspectors said, and staff had received training on the policy so that they were clear about how it should be implemented.

"However, the school's revised behaviour expectations and behaviour systems are not used consistently by all staff," Ofsted said.

"Nonetheless, there are signs that behaviour is improving."

Inspectors said in the letter that Mr Lee was "fully aware" that there was "still much more work to do for the school to come out of a category of concern".

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