How do you improve a failing school?

A headteacher of a school where staff previously went on strike over poor behaviour said making the academy phone-free had helped.

Last May, teachers at Westbourne Academy in Ipswich walked out, with some even reporting they had had scissors thrown at them by students.

Ofsted had rated the school as inadequate, but recently returned to monitor progress. Inspectors noted that improvements had been made, but "continued work" was needed.

Principal Martin Higgon told BBC Radio Suffolk a number of changes had been made that he believed had helped students and staff alike.

"We built up to going phone-free at January," he explained.

"So we brought in mobile phone pouches [so] that children turn their phones off and put them into pouches at the start of the day.

"We've now got really calm corridors, our students are in their lessons where they should be, our students are much more punctual, we've seen a huge reduction in internal truancy, which is where children are in school, but they're not where they should be, that's dropped by about 90%.

"Arguments over phones dropped by about 80%."

Higgon said that staff had reported that having a phone-free school had made it feel "significantly different, far less stressful" and that the school culture had shifted.

He added that since the issues last year, the school had also introduced several new staff members, including a vice principal of behaviour, a new special educational needs and disabilities coordinator (SENCO), as well as more staff in the pastoral team and new heads of year groups.

He said the staff had done "sterling work" since joining.

"The realities of a modern school is that children's behaviour in high schools is more challenging than it used to be," he continued.

"Since Covid, since we've moved toward young people who are going home and sitting in their bedrooms on screens.

"They're not building the social skills that we used to get when we were at schools ourselves or when we'd play out in the evenings or at the weekends... you'd solve your problems without any adults there... they're not having those conversations, so when they're coming into school they're finding it difficult to cope quite often.

"That's where our additional capacity for our pastoral team has helped; that's where them not having access to their school phones during the day has made a big difference."

Higgon said he was having regular meetings with staff and union representatives to ensure their feedback was included in improvement plans.

The school is currently being transferred to a new trust, and Ofsted, in its recent inspection, said this had resulted in some change with substantial improvement in pupil behaviour.

Ofsted is due to visit the school again before the summer holidays.

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