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Numbers don't add up at smallest school
Following months of wrangling over the futures of Sheffield schools Myers Grove and Wisewood, another city secondary now faces an uncertain future. Education Correspondent Mike Russell reports:
SMALL is beautiful, so they say, but that isn't necessarily the case when it comes to secondary schools.
The Men from the Ministry who have the final say-so over releasing cash for school rebuilds take a dim view of secondaries with spare places and comparatively modest numbers of pupils.
So it was inevitable questions would be asked when Sheffield's Abbeydale Grange sought its place in the national multi-billion pound Building Schools for the Future programme.
School facing closure as numbers fall
According to Sonia Sharp, the city's new executive director of children's services: "The Department for Children, Schools and Families have told us we must take a close look at Abbeydale as they feel the numbers don't add up."
Those numbers show that Abbeydale has 750 school places – the smallest secondary in the city – but these are never fully taken up.
The school has a fluctuating population which tends to increase as the academic year progresses, but at the start of the current term almost a third of the places were unfilled.
Also counting against Abbeydale is its current academic record – it is one of 10 city secondaries which have been challenged to boost their GCSE scores by 2010 or face possible closure.
Supporters argue that exam pass rates alone can hardly tell the whole story for a school with such a diverse ethnic population – where standards in maths are relatively high but students from a variety of countries inevitably take longer to make the grade in English GCSE.
Abbeydale Grange has travelled a long way since the current school building opened exactly 50 years ago, a new home for the Nether Edge Grammar School for boys. Up the hill at what is now Bannerdale training centre was Abbeydale Girls Grammar, and it was in 1972 that the two schools merged to create a supersize comprehensive called Abbeydale Grange with more than 2,000 pupils.
The current incarnation on the Hastings Road site at Millhouses was created in the early 1990s, and it has evolved since then into the city's most multicultural school, with children from as many as 35 countries speaking 50 different mother tongues.
Questions over its future are nothing new – a review was carried out by then education chief Jonathan Crossley-Holland a decade ago, but it was decided then the school should stay open.
It was felt that communities in the so-called Abbeydale Corridor – stretching back along Abbeydale Road towards the city centre – deserved their own secondary school, despite the extra resources it consumed.
But a succession of headteachers have failed to convince many of the parents in the school's catchment that Abbeydale, where white pupils constitute less than a third of the total roll, is right for their children.
Beginning the current debate, Coun Andrew Sangar revealed that only one in seven catchment families list it as their first choice when making applications.
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Latest sport. Schools like Meadowhead, High Storrs and Silverdale are much more sought after.
Current head Kate Bull is only too aware of that dilemma.
Not long after taking charge in 2005, she said her main objective was to change the school’s reputation.
She said: “I was aware that many parents deliberately send their child anywhere but Abbeydale Grange.
“As a parent I know that not every school is right for everyone, but it is difficult to convince parents about the strength of a school when opinions are based on out-of-date information which is then perpetuated in the community.”
Out of necessity Abbeydale has become a specialist secondary with outstanding skills in teaching English as a second language and in helping displaced young people from around the world find their feet in a new city.
If Abbeydale were to close, the dispersal of such expertise could be a real problem for the city’s wider education system.
But Abbeydale does have many supportive parents, who often passionately defend its caring, small school ethos and highly value its diverse multi-ethnic atmosphere.
Some argue that continuing uncertainty over the school’s longer term future is in itself a considerable deterrent to families choosing a school for the next five years.
This was one factor in Abbeydale choosing to move away from local authority control last year to become the city’s first foundation school – taking on powers similar to those enjoyed by the Catholic high schools.
Governors felt that this would secure the school’s future and give it protection from any city council moves to merge or close it down to remove its surplus places from the education system.
This belief now seems misplaced, with Coun Sangar insisting the authority still has the ultimate power to intervene if academic standards are not up to scratch.
Now three separate consultation groups will have three months to decide whether a very different secondary like Abbeydale Grange can still justify its place among the city’s family of schools.
And even if they say yes, it will be those Men from the Ministry who will need to be convinced that it can have a successful and viable future.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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