JKHS Parent Network

Welcome to the JKHS Parent Network Website.

This group was founded to seek improvements at John Kyrle High School around Mental Health and expresses and supports Students, Families, and Staff who are affected by John Kyrle's leadership. The leadership refuses to engage around mental health, with Nigel Griffiths having stonewalled over 300 people who asked him for a meeting about Mental Health.

Search Facebook for "JKHS Parent Network", you can then click Join and once approved you'll be part of the group.

We are now more hopeful than ever to have engagement with John Kyrle High School over the topic of Mental Health.

Why? Since 2018 all attempts at engagement with the school, to work with it, to help bring about improvements has sadly been met with stonewalling by the school, who have displayed no willing to engage. However, 2021 has now seen the removal, not once but twice of the Trustee Board. With DfE oversight in place it is considered likely that independent governance should likely now happen. Independent governance it is believed should be keen indeed to seek and ensure engagement where there has previously been none.

In the light of these ongoing and highly significant events, here is an overview of structural changes and corrective processes launched in order to make positive differences at John Kyrle High School.

News will be covered on these topics as healthy Senior Leadership and Governance is key. This will include potentially a broad range of issues at the school.

John Kyrle High School's Leadership has come under the scrutiny of the DfE. Ofsted, the Regional School's Commissioner and the ESFA are aware of the wide array of deeply concerning issues at this Ross-on-Wye School.

In recent years, huge sums of public funds have been wasted by the school, with the actions of John Kyrle's Leadership incurring huge costs and over expenditure.

The Senior Leadership Group of Nigel Griffiths, David Boyd, Mark Burton, Trixie Clarke, Mark Croad, Rob Wallace, Kristian Phillips, Christine Bryan and Carol Straughan have been in place for many years. In education it is generally accepted that it is unhealthy for a school to not have rotation of new people coming in, and it is cited that at JKHS, leadership do not move on as they are substantially overpaid and would never earn that money in any equivalent school. Serious concerns over the leadership's conduct and over financial activities such as the why the Senior Leadership Group is needlessly large and overpaid, are just a few of the issues explored in a Review of Governance, the report of which was given to the school in Spring 2021.

Following this review, an Action Plan was launched by the DfE to correct what they have seen and this has seen the end of not one, but two Trustee Boards. The first, was headed by Headteacher Nigel Griffiths' close acquaintance Denise Strutt, and the second by squash partner and close acquaintance of his, Murray Alston. Neither governance had shown independence, and neither had held Headteacher Nigel Griffiths, David Boyd and others to account for malpractice. Concerns over some of the Members that sit above the Trustees, and their lack of independence also have increased.

Following so many of staff talking of mistreatment at the hands of Nigel Griffiths, David Boyd and others, and an Employment Tribunal brought against the school which it lost on all major counts, it was exposed for its malpractice. Headteacher Nigel Griffiths had even exclaimed "FIGJAM" meaning 'F**k, I'm Good, Just Ask Me' when seeming to be revelling in thinking he'd found something he could use for what turned out to be a cruel, sham, and completely unreasonable sacking of a head of department. It was also examined how he appeared to have threatened this teacher with police action and how it was attempted to destroy her career. The school's actions were exposed and such was the shocking nature of what it had done, it hit national press.

Nigel Griffiths conduct was noted, and his hatred and discrimination were seen as major reason for what he and others at the school did. Ofsted dropped him from his Lead Ofsted Inspector position and the DfE removed him from his position as a National Leader of Education. These actions ensured he could no longer do any advisory work in other schools.