Published: 30 April, 2010
by ROISIN GADELRAB

TROUBLED Canonbury Primary school – where Boris Johnson and Lord Adonis sent their children – could soon be placed in special measures after failing an ­Ofsted inspection, the ­Tribune can exclusively reveal.
A leaked confidential report to governors this week ordered a dramatic shake-up of staff, including the loss of up to 30 full and part-time posts and reported the current staffing model is “failing”.
It went on to say there was “too much satisfactory or inadequate teaching” and “too high a ­level of resources” are spent on staff, particu­larly support and agency personnel. It recommends “an urgent restructure” of staffing “on all fronts”.
It comes following the publication of a draft Ofsted report which could see the school placed in special measures – if not appealed.
Questions were being asked this week as to how the school, a favourite with the borough’s elite, could have slipped so far, even after Islington Council stepped in to closely monitor it over a recruitment scandal in 2008.
Plans to cut up to 30 support staff and save the school tens of thousands of pounds, are a result of “mismanagement”, say unions.
Canonbury has been plagued with troubles ever since it emerged that vital recruitment procedures had not been followed when taking on teaching staff.
Headteacher Jay Henderson was sacked, as was drama teacher Rob Stringer, who later died the night before he was due to face trial on child sex charges not relating to Canonbury pupils. The school has been under temporary rule ever since.
New headteacher Matt Britt took over in Feb­ruary and has ordered the shake-up.
Staff and unions were told last week that a consultation is under way and Mr Britt informed parents of the plans on Monday.
Insiders say the school’s poor performance is a knock-on effect from deep-rooted problems stemming from Canonbury’s previously failed recruitment procedures.
One source close to the school, described the inspection result as “dire”.
But others have leapt to its defence.
Islington council leader Terry Stacy said: “The school has appointed a new headteacher and has turned a corner.”
A Canonbury insider said: “If standards are to be improved the headteacher needs to stamp his mark. These improvements are long overdue.”
GMB branch secretary Vaughan West said: “There’s been mismanagement of the school for a long period of time. I make no judgement on the current headteacher. He only came into the job in February and immediately faced an inspection.
“Canonbury is quite a high profile school. The headteacher told us clearly the children are succeeding despite the school. While on paper Sats results might not look too bad, they should have done better.”
He added: “The proposals are quite severe in that there are up to 30 redundancies. There are a number of reasons for this – the new head was appointed in February and has reviewed what he inherited, there’s been mismanagement, budgetary constraints and there was an Ofsted inspection last term. We were told they were expecting a bad inspection report. It was likely that the school would be put into special measures.
“Why should support staff have to bear the brunt of mismanagement? Were Cambridge Education [the private company which manages Special measures for school?]
and the borough’s schools and the council not aware of this? You’d have thought that by now they’d have got a grip on this. ”
Labour education spokesman Richard Watts said: “I understand the school is being placed in special ­measures.
“The problems have been caused by recruitment problems identified by [independent inspector] Janet Mokades’ report a year ago and I’m staggered the Lib Dems haven’t sorted them out in that time.”
Eleanor Schooling, Islington’s director of children’s services, said: “As this is only a draft report from Ofsted it would be inappropriate to comment on its contents.
“As is the normal procedure for school inspection reports, the headteacher and governors have a period of time to check the report for accuracy, consider their response and send this back to Ofsted.

 The final, official version of the report will be made public as usual.”