According to a recent Tes article, Ofsted recognises the challenges facing schools in highly disadvantaged areas. Whilst our recent Ofsted went OK, it was clear that, despite a fantastic Progress 8, our low attainment scores meant an “outstanding” judgement was always beyond our reach.

We know that the students we teach face the lure of knife crime and gang culture. Yet, we still spend our days sweating the small stuff, because that is what we are expected to do.

Six years ago I taught an unruly lad whom I will refer to as Robert*. He had been permanently excluded from a neighbouring school and was a bit of a handful in the classroom. He happened to take my option subject and he narrowly missed his target C and got a D instead, which still enabled him to get to college but was hardly the triumph we both secretly wished for. He acknowledged that he should have worked a lot harder and that his D was no reflection of the way he was taught. Nevertheless, I still felt saddened by the result. I remembered this when, a couple of years later, Robert’s name appeared in the headlines of our local paper because he had been charged with two counts of attempted murder.

Not isolated incidents

Four years ago, when I was head of year, I worked with two fantastic but troubled students. I must have spent three-quarters of my time working with these two alone. We put in lots of support, including modifying their timetables and finding them part-time work placements. They thrived in their last year of school. Yet, despite them leaving on a high, I have since learned that one is now in prison for drug offences and the other was stabbed during an altercation.

One might think these were isolated incidents, but I have many more stories like them.

Whilst Ofsted says it will take an understanding approach to schools operating under challenging circumstances, schools like mine also have to battle to uphold their very fragile reputations. We were swooped on by the local press following a fight after school in a nearby street involving two of our students who were still in uniform. The incident involved one student stabbing another. Ofsted clearly heard about the incident and, when they arrived a few weeks later, they went through our safeguarding procedures with more than just a little professional curiosity.

‘The sin bin of the local authority’ 

No matter what our school achieves or how appreciative parents or students might be for the time and effort we devote to our work, students stabbing each other a few streets away from the front gates is hardly the greatest endorsement for nervous parents of 10-year-olds. As a result, the school is still far from full, which brings additional budgetary pressures. It also means that students told to leave nearby schools before they are permanently excluded naturally end up with us. We are the ‘sin bin’ of the local authority.

When you think about it like that, getting a student a D instead of a C seems to be missing the point. Forcing students into EBacc subjects instead of doing whatever it takes to keep them engaged and motivated is just ignorant and cruel. The harder our school works to give its students some real-life chances, the harder it is when they are spat out of the system and eventually succumb to the rampant lure of knife crime, gang culture and drugs. Our school is no match for that.

If the government really wants to create outstanding chances for young people and to make access to good education a right for everyone, it needs to stop pressurising schools with constant data monitoring and a punitive inspection processes. Instead, it should start investing in the police, youth work schemes and social services to restore some much-needed order to the communities in which they operate.

Rather than simply not penalising schools in challenging circumstances, Ofsted should be asking some wider questions: what is happening in these areas of disadvantage and how can we begin to level the playing field?

Until we can address that issue, schools like mine can do nothing but continue to sweat the small stuff and soldier on as best we can.

* Details of the stories in this article have been changed to protect identities.

The writer is a secondary school teacher

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