Programmes 2 & 3

Content Résumé

Programmes two and three, ‘We Bother with Everything’ and ‘The Last Detail’, visit Dormers Wells High School. The head teacher is Janet Leigh. Dormers Wells is also a mixed comprehensive, with 870 pupils, situated in Ealing, west London. 56% of the pupils are entitled to free school meals. Three quarters of the school’s students have English as an additional language, whilst 50% have a special educational need. In the year before filming, 31% of students at the school had gained at least five GCSE A* – C grades.

Dormers Wells has established rigorous systems to support student behaviour and learning. ‘We Bother with Everything’ concentrates on the range of strategies employed to support learning in the classroom, as well as on systems to support new members of staff. ‘The Last Detail’ illustrates the role of heads of year and senior staff in managing a whole-school procedure that monitors and supports student behaviour as a foundation for improving their learning.

Viewers of the three programmes will want to share their reactions to the two schools as presented in the programmes. In addition, they will want to relate their view of their own school to the view the programmes give of Ruffwood and Dormers Wells; and to relate all of these to the criteria of effectiveness in OFSTED’s Improving City Schools.

Extracts and résumés from the report follow. We suggest that, after viewing the programmes and reading the extracts and résumés, viewers discuss:

• how well the two schools exemplify the criteria of effectiveness in the report
• the performance of their own school, and/or of other schools with which they are familiar, in relation to the improvements evident in the two schools in the films, and in relation to the criteria in the report.