Negative stories on St Sampson's are 'destructive'

When you read through the article, there are two clear issues – the first, that some teachers and heads of department are not returning phone calls to discuss parental issues, and the second, is about staff shortages.

There is no question that teaching staff should return phone calls/emails within a certain time-frame. To not do so is wholly unacceptable. But if this is not done, it is not the entire school that is letting that child down – which is the inference of the headline.

It is the fault of the teacher, then their line manager and ultimately the senior leadership team and the head teacher – and if it is still not dealt with properly, then the layer of management above, which is led by Liz Coffey and ultimately, the director of Education, Nick Hynes.

Not the school and the staff, most of whom work tirelessly to deliver the best educational outcomes possible. But yet again, it is a chance for the newspaper to have a go at this High School and again, gives your staff the chance to mention the Ofsted report of earlier this year.

Ofsted also inspected another school recently – St Martin’s Primary. It makes very interesting reading to see how your paper addressed the findings of this report. What many people found incredible, was that the real headline – that the quality of education they are delivering each day was graded as ‘requires improvement’ – was totally buried.

To anyone who works in Education, we all know what this really means – this is your day job – and if it requires improvement, you aren’t doing it nearly well enough.

When it comes to staff shortages, again, this is something that is, of course, out of the control of the school – and is a massive problem across the island. There are not enough staff in many schools and getting supply staff to cover is virtually impossible. This again, is down to many different issues, two of them being pay and working conditions.

Continuing to print negative headlines and negative stories about St Sampson’s is having a destructive effect on so many levels – first and foremost on the teaching staff at the school. It is extremely unfair that they feel as if they have to constantly defend themselves – something that’s very hard, in the face of incorrect headlines.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED