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Sept 2023

Last Updated: 22/09/2023

Education

Harrogate's 'inner-city school' is improving, says headteacher

by John Grainger

| 23 Sept, 2023

Sukhraj Gill, headteacher of Harrogate High School.

When Harrogate High School held its autumn open evening on Thursday, there will have been some parents present who needed to be won over.

After 10 years of being rated 'satisfactory' by Ofsted, and then another 10 years rated 'good', the school was downgraded earlier this year to 'requires improvement' – the third-best out of four ratings.

But speaking to the Stray Ferret ahead of the open evening, headteacher Sukhraj Gill said the thorny subject of the school’s Ofsted report was not one he was going to duck. He said:

“It’s the first thing I talk about on parents’ evenings – it's not an elephant in the room for me. On paper, we’re ‘requires improvement’, but we are improving.”

Mr Gill arrived at Harrogate High in January 2022 and had been in post little over a year when the Ofsted inspectors came the following spring.

A graduate of the University of Warwick, he completed his teaching qualifications at the University of Cambridge and taught maths for over 20 years in West Yorkshire, including a decade at Bradford Academy (then rated 'good'), where he was vice principal.

Photo of the headteacher of Harrogate High School, Sukhraj Gill, standing in front of the school.

He said:

“Before I started this job, people said to me ‘Harrogate High? That’s the worst school in Harrogate’. I heard all those descriptions of the school before I even set foot through the door.

"That just tells me that these students need good-quality education, and good-quality people who value them and can help them grow and move on to their next destinations.

“I’m not saying I’m anybody special, but I think I can bring a bit of experience and strategy.”

He came to Harrogate High at a time when the school – like many around the country – was still reeling from the covid pandemic. The school had lost its sixth form, and a lot of students – even those from secure, well-off backgrounds – were displaying the traits of social disadvantage: disorganisation, lack of focus, and persistent absenteeism.

Mr Gill, who is the school's third headteacher since the last Ofsted inspection in 2017, said:

“At that time, we [already] had some turbulence among the teachers and leadership here. We own that – we're not going to hide from that. But we’re part of the Northern Star Academies Trust, and they were all over that, hiring a school improvement officer and replacing the senior leaders here. I was the last piece, as the headteacher.”

But the changes didn’t stop at new staff. The Ofsted report highlighted several areas where the school, which has around 750 students, needed to improve, and Mr Gill is introducing best practice strategies to effect the necessary changes.

One criticism of the school was that the implementation of the curriculum in some subjects was not as effective as in others, so he has developed a teacher toolkit, which lays out the different phases that every lesson must feature.

Ofsted also pointed out that some staff didn’t not use the school behaviour policy consistently, so Mr Gill has created scripts for teachers to use in the most common situations.

Another observation was that the personal development curriculum was not planned to the same level as subject curriculum planning, so the school identified its core values under the acronym CARES – courage, aspiration, respect, equality and self-control – which permeate school life.

The watchword is consistency – in expectations, behaviour, lesson structure and planning. Mr Gill said:

“This is an evidence-based approach, and it’s effective for all students, even high attainers. If you have consistency in learning, language, the way teachers teach, it helps students make an impact quicker.”

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Beyond the classroom, there is a wide range of extracurricular activities, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards have been reintroduced, there’s a farm twinning project with Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and there are even plans to create an urban farm at the school at some point over the next three years.

For the more academically minded, Mr Gill says the curriculum was built “from the top down” rather than from the bottom up, and is delivered with high expectations.

The overall mission is to be a school for the community which supports every child regardless of background, says Mr Gill:

“My experience of working in inner cities is good for Harrogate High School, because this is effectively an inner-city comprehensive school – even though Harrogate is a town. This is a true comprehensive school. We’ve got affluence and high attainers, and we’ve also got some real disadvantage, and that's not always appreciated by the wider community.”

The data reinforces the point. Harrogate High School has the highest percentage of children with special educational needs and disability (SEND) of all the mainstream schools in North Yorkshire. Nearly 30% of children receive free school meals, compared with 15% across the county and around 24% nationally. Mr Gill said:

“We’ve got children here who are looked-after children, we’ve got children who are young carers for parents who are drug abusers, we’ve got children who we feed breakfast to, because they can’t get it at home. But we’re an inclusive school. We won’t let any child down.”

Whether Mr Gill is successful in his mission could be measured in various ways, but he says his mindset has never been based around his personal success – it’s always about the students. He said:

“When you make a difference to students who need the difference made, that brings the greatest sense of fulfilment.

“I’m a very spiritual person – I do a lot of meditation – and I’ve always thought we’re chosen to be here, at this point in time.”

The other obvious measure of success will be the next Ofsted inspection – whenever that may come – but that doesn't seem to faze him. He said:

“We’ve put strategies into place and we’re now starting to see a culture shift. If Ofsted came in a year’s time, I believe we’d have a completely different report.

“But we don’t work just to an Ofsted inspection – it only reflects a point in time. We work for the students. We serve our community. That’s who we're here for.”

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