From Oxbridge feeder school to an Ofsted ‘inadequate’: what’s going on at King Ted’s?

Good afternoon members — and welcome to Thursday’s Tribune, coming to you on Friday (our apologies for the delay).

This week, thousands of primary school pupils in Sheffield are finding out which high school they’ve got into. For decades, one of the most popular has been King Edward VII School in Broomhill. King Ted’s (as everyone knows it) is the oldest school in Sheffield, dating back to the 17th century, and has historically also been one of the highest achieving. However, after it failed its Ofsted inspection last year, the government moved swiftly to turn it into an academy. Since then, parents and governors have been trying to fight the proposal. But will they succeed? Sarah Crabtree reports.

Editor’s note: As is customary with our Thursday emails (even when they’re published on a Friday), we’ve paywalled this piece midway through to encourage those of you who have been sampling the delights of The Tribune for free to reach for their wallet. The Tribune is entirely funded by you, our members — and while we’re always excited about new readers, whether paying or not, we need the funds we get from paying members to pay our writers. So a huge thank you, as always, to our generous paid subscribers.

Mini-briefing

🏬 Six “high-quality” proposals for the reuse of the former Cole Brothers store on Barker’s Pool have been received by Sheffield City Council. Bids to renovate the 1960s modernist building were invited last year after it was given Grade II-listed status by Historic England. The council said that all six of the proposals were from “experienced developers with a strong track record of redeveloping similar buildings”. A final decision will be made by the council in May.

🎸 A great article on Gigwise about Sheffield’s “criminally underrated” live music scene. Cut off from the main UK tour circuit, the story says the city has developed its own DIY ethos, with venues like Delicious Clam, Hatch, Sidney and Matilda, Yellow Arch, Lughole and The Washington all providing interesting alternatives to the more mainstream venues. The piece also includes a “Sheffield Scene Crash Course” Spotify playlist of local bands for you to try.

🦢 Another fascinating piece from our regular contributor David Bocking about the flora and fauna you will be able to see in and around Sheffield in March. This month’s update includes boxing brown hares, whooper swans in the Derwent Valley, chiffchaffs from North Africa, sand martins in Kelham Island, wood anemones, curlews and the year’s first butterflies.

Things to do

🍻 Sheffield Beer Week begins on Friday, 3 March with the return of the always-brilliant Indie Beer Feast at Trafalgar Warehouse. Organised by the folk behind the specialist beer shop Hop Hideout, the event will feature both locally brewed beers as well as those made by some of the best-loved craft beer breweries in the UK. There will also be low-intervention wines, fine cider and delicious street food. There will be two sessions on both Friday, 3 and Saturday, 4 March (11:30am-4:30pm and 5:30pm–10:30pm). Tickets are priced £8.50-£10 per session.

🍿 The Sheffield Adventure Film Festival kicks off on Friday, 3 March, bringing three days of adrenaline-fuelled films about young adventurers, climbing, running and watersports to the Showroom Cinema on Paternoster Row. As well as all the films, you can also listen to and join in discussions, enjoy art and photography exhibitions in the Showroom foyer, and head to the Outpost at the Workstation next door for free talks, a kit swap, exhibitions and demos.

🎭 Beginning at the Crucible’s Playhouse on Saturday, 4 March is Wildfire Road, a new play by Eve Leigh in which all is not as it seems. Honeymooners, middle managers and spontaneous singletons settle after take-off to Tokyo. But this flight is no holiday as the plane has been hijacked. As a wildfire burns below them, what’s the hijacker’s motive? And where will they land? Tickets are £22 and doors open at 7.30pm. The show runs until Saturday, 18 March.

From Oxbridge feeder school to an Ofsted ‘inadequate’: what’s going on at King Ted’s?

High on the walls of the assembly hall of King Edward VII School in Broomhill — alma mater of journalist Emily Maitlis, comic creation John Shuttleworth, and the synth-pop founders of The Human League — hang 16 oak boards. Flanked by a cathedral pipe organ, beneath a coffered wooden ceiling and sweeping curved gallery, the boards are engraved with hundreds of names: ‘Honours Won By Boys Whilst At The School’ dating back to 1906.

One, opposite a sign displaying the school motto ‘Fac Recte, Nil Time: Do Right, Fear Nothing’, records the year 1944. As the horrors of D-Day were dawning on the beaches of Normandy for old boys little older than himself, MP Fanthom was earning a scholarship to study Maths and Physics at Trinity College, Cambridge. Twenty years later in 1964, as Beatlemania swept the globe, PB Hall was winning an open scholarship in modern studies at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Each year ‘King Ted’s’ as it is affectionately known still sends a dozen or so students to Oxbridge, more than any school in Yorkshire, bar one (Greenhead College, Huddersfield). This year, of only 31 places at Oxford University to study modern languages and linguistics, three offers have been made to sixth formers at KES.

But amidst such history and prestige, huge change is looming. KES stands alone as Sheffield’s last local authority-maintained secondary school, in a city where all others are academies. Now an Ofsted inspection has judged the 1,800 pupil school — previously rated ‘good’ with outstanding features — as ‘inadequate’. And that rating means a school is automatically, compulsorily, forced by the Department for Education to become an academy, with no say in choosing its sponsor. 

The response has been visceral. Inspections took place last autumn, but the publication of the Ofsted report and the school’s response came five weeks ago. Within days of the school’s confirmation of the news, a website (kesthefuture.org) had been set up by worried parents, a community of WhatsApp groups had rallied, and a petition had been drafted. Signatures currently number more than 600.