South London school loved by Ofsted where 1 in 10 kids used to get GCSEs

A “failing” South London school where just one in 10 students received a GCSE is now rated outstanding by Ofsted after a dramatic turnaround. Sylvan High School was “half-empty” by the time it was taken over by the Harris Federation, which control 51 schools across London and Essex.

All but one of the group’s schools is rated at least “good” by Ofsted, with Chief Executive of the Harris Academy Sir Dan Moynihan saying the group’s “relentlessly high expectations” of students and pupils is the reason for their success.

Harris City Academy, which replaced Sylvan High School, along with South Norwood and Girls Academy Bromley, were all name-checked in a Sunday Times report which branded Crystal Palace the best place to live in London earlier this month.

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Sir Dan took over as principal of Harris City Academy in the 1990s and described its turnaround from Sylvan High School. He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “Many of the schools that joined were troubled when they came and, interestingly, unpopular. So Crystal Palace was a previously failing school called Sylvan High School that was half-empty. Harris South Norwood, now outstanding, [was] half-empty and failing. Harris Beckenham was failing and half-empty. They’re all now outstanding and oversubscribed.

“The first thing is to sort out discipline. It doesn’t mean you have to be horrible, it just means you have to have consistency. And then you invest heavily in the training of staff to up-skill them. And where teachers have been in schools that are struggling, sometimes their enthusiasm gets worn down. So you have to make it possible for them to teach, and then invest heavily in how to teach really, really well.”

The success story of the Harris schools means 150 students over the last five years have gone on to Cambridge or Oxford. They count British rapper Stormzy among their ex-students, with the musician attending Harris’ South Norwood secondary and then Crystal Palace’s sixth form.

Sir Dan said: “We don’t accept that people’s home circumstances should determine their outcomes but unfortunately in this country too often there’s a correlation, for example, between parental income and where someone ends up. That’s completely unacceptable, as is the differential attainment between different ethnic groups.

“We’ve been really successful in raising the attainment of all groups so that low income or disadvantaged students now perform better than average at Harris, but not just better than disadvantaged kids nationally, but all kids nationally on average.”

Despite the achievements of federation, Sir Dan added: “The job’s never done. Life is unfair, it needn’t be unfair, all we have to do is hit it head on and make it fairer. At Harris Federation we’re on a mission to improve social mobility and it won’t be finished until people in all walks of life run our country – judges, politicians, top medics – look and sound like the population they rule. That’s what we’re for.”