Hi Paul - my son's in year 2 in Rose Hill and hopefully my daughter will be next year. Personally I have been extremely happy with the school. The teachers my son has had have been brilliant, and he's doing really well there. There's a good learning ethos, and I've seen none of that stressing about things like SATs that you sometimes get (I have a relative elsewhere in the UK who ended up moving their children from an "Outstanding" school because the school was stressing their children.)
It's a modern school with good facilities, and although it's a bit larger than most primary schools, that also brings opportunities by having a wider range of staff with diverse skills.
On the Ofsted rating, what they told us was that they were anticipating most of what Ofsted raised, and were already working on them. If you look in the Ofsted report you'll notice Key Stage 2 comes in for more negative comment than Key Stage 1, and obviously I have no experience of that. But the head teacher has been working to improve the school for a couple of years. And hopefully the next Ofsted inspection in the next year or two will be much better. Ofsted inspections do only tell you so much - they're a snapshot and I'm not always sure I trust them myself.
Obviously later in the year there will be tours for prospective parents - I would say if anyone has concerns over the Ofsted report, to take the time to grill the head at Rose Hill on it and how they're progressing. That'll help give you an answer.
When we did the tour, Rose Hill entrusted the Year 6 pupils to do tours with parents, rather than the head as other schools did (with the opportunity to talk to staff later.) I hope they still do that because it was probably the most interesting tour we did! The things children think are the most important are quite different. We learned a lot about storage cupboards and photocopiers. No head teacher will bother telling you about them!
It was great to be able to grill the children on how they view school life. Actually I think that was the moment that really sold Rose Hill to me, if all is said and done.
