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Flagship new academy failing
ONE of Sheffield's flagship City Academies is failing its pupils just three years after it was removed from council control, a Government inspection report confirms today.
Sheffield Park on the Manor – formerly Waltheof School – is rated 'inadequate' in all the inspection categories and is criticised for poor standards of leadership and management.
When it closed Waltheof was not in special measures – its last full inspection in 2004 found it was making 'reasonable progress'.
Last year pupils moved into a new 30million building, a replacement for the existing Waltheof school which had only been rebuilt in the mid 1990s at a cost of 8million following a fire.
The verdict will come as an embarrassment to ministers and supporters of the Academy programme – only last week Cabinet Minister for Schools Ed Balls was in Sheffield to mark the opening of the city's third such secondary at Parkwood.
Both Labour and the Conservatives are committed to creating more academies – the Government wants to double the current number to 400 by 2011.
The Park report also comes only weeks after a poor report for its sister academy Springs, which was given an official 'notice to improve'.
Do your children go to the school? What do you think of Sheffield's Academies? Join the debate by adding your comment below.
Park and Springs are run by Anglican charity the United Learning Trust,
which insists that over the last three years GCSE results and attendance figures have improved while exclusion rates are down.
But Park, which opened in April last year, has had an up and down year, with racial troubles erupting during the winter term and principal of the two academies David Lewis stepping down before the summer break due to ill health.
Park parents were warned of the impending bad news in a letter at the end of the summer term, which said management changes were already taking place.
A previous inspection had found half its pupils had learning difficulties, their test results on joining the school were well below expected averages, and their reading ages were exceptionally low.
Sheffield's Lib Dem council remains unconvinced by academies – not one councillor attended the Parkwood opening and the party only gave the go-ahead to Parkwood after parents were balloted first.
Mary Boulton, of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said the Park verdict strengthened the case for a fresh investigation into academies.
"The idea that a private provider will automatically solve deep-rooted
generational problems in a school serving a poor area is simply untrue. Sheffield Park just illustrates this," she added.
ULT chief executive Sir Ewan Harper insisted there had been considerable progress at Park since it opened. "GCSE attainment has risen, attendance is up and exclusions are down. We have put in place a broader curriculum and established a sixth form that is beginning to change decades of acceptance that education ended at 16," he said.
"ULT takes responsibility for the Ofsted judgement. Before the Ofsted visit we had already identified problems at the strategic leadership level of the academy and had begun to rectify these. Ofsted confirmed our findings and have acknowledged the steps we have taken.
"Over the course of the summer we have been putting in place a new management structure, have strengthened the governance and are working with the senior leadership team on accelerating improvement. Despite the Ofsted judgement, we look ahead to this new academic year with optimism.We have a committed and dedicated leadership and staff at the academy, who, with the systems and structures now in place, will bring about the necessary improvements."
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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