John Loughborough looks set to be closed after years of problems.

Failing Tottenham school faces closure

by Flora Drury Thursday, September 13, 2012
7:00 AM

“Failing” John Loughborough School is facing closure, 30 years after being set up with two goals – to provide Seventh-day Adventist children in London with a Christian education, and to counter problems with African and Caribbean children underperforming in schools.

It was hoped, when the school moved to Voluntary Aided status, it would improve its financial viability, the provision of learning resources, and access to a Christian education.

Yet in 2011, just 34 per cent of the school’s intake came from a Seventh-day Advenist background and the results for black Caribbean and black African pupils in English and maths were well below the national average.

In 2008, the school faced a large budget deficit that it is still trying to claw back.

This year, just 12 pupils put the school as first choice.

It has been in the Ofsted “category for concern” since 2007 and, last December, inspectors found the quality of teaching, leadership and pupil’s overall achievement was inadequate.

Only behaviour and safety fared better, on the borderline of good and satisfactory.

The report recommending the school’s closure was jointly commissioned by Haringey Council and the South England Conference of Seventh Day Adventists (SEC) in the wake of that visit.

The resulting report notes: “The school is in the nine per cent of secondary schools nationally judged ‘inadequate’ and no other school in Haringey has exhibited such little improvement in inspections over the past five years.”

Some question how the school has been allowed to continue for this long.

Julie Davies, secretary of Haringey’s National Union of Teachers, noted: “I simply do not know why the council has not intervened before now.

“Everything about education services in Haringey lacks urgency.”