ITEM CH10
CHILDREN’S SERVICES SCRUTINY COMMITTEE – 8 JULY 2008
VISIT TO PEERS SCHOOL, MAY 9 2008
We spoke to the deputy head Jeannette Mackie who was enthusiastic about the idea of the Academy as the only way to get sufficient funds to provide better accommodation. The rate of change is, however, too fast from school to academy. The Academy is one of a number of DSCF ‘fast-track’ schemes – from initiation to opening in not much more than 18 months, The compression of timescales means that there is no opportunity for slippage, and inevitably this has happened. The HMI report on Peers in March judged that plans for the Academy were embryonic and not well enough advanced.
At the time of my visit staff were still uncertain about their futures. None of the senior staff has been appointed at a level commensurate with their current status and three of them have chosen to leave without the certainty of employment elsewhere.
The Academy sponsors have pledged that inclusion will remain a priority but experience in other parts of the country is that there has been an increase in the number of exclusions from academies in their first year of existence.
Numbers are well below the admission number for September due to uncertainty over the school’s future. I asked what would attract parents to the academy – Jeanette speculated that having a new uniform, a new badge and some new paint on the old buildings might be enough to do so in the first instance. The sponsors would say that the prospect of significantly improved behaviour will be the key attraction.
Will Oxford Community School suffer if parents do choose Peers? It might well.
Will the proposed sixth form of 450 really materialize? For how long will children doing A levels have to go to Cherwell or Cheney? Is this the right thing for them?
It is not yet clear just what new buildings will actually be built – or when. There is the feeling that the Academy could have been more innovative with the curriculum. It is hoped, however, that plans for 2009/10 will be more adventurous to better match the needs of the children. This opportunity could be lost? One interesting idea is to employ primary teachers for what will be known as the ‘Year 7 School’. The idea is to accelerate the development of the generally very low literacy, numeracy and thinking skills of an intake with c.50% on the special needs register.
At present the school is getting very satisfactory Contextual Value Added scores – better than several other schools in the county, even if the raw scores are not very high. Support is given by learning mentors, who have training. Learning mentors are support workers (for example, higher level TAs) who work with individual young people at risk of underachievement. Typically, a learning mentor would work with a pupil who isn’t good at making plans and getting work done on time, by having a weekly meeting (15-30 minutes) on a 1:1 basis to discuss progress and set targets for next week. LMs work mainly with Year 11 pupils,
The school also draws on additional volunteers and in the last two years have included Governors, OCC staff, some local people – all of whom work with 2/3 individuals (about 25 in total) for about 3 months in the run up to exams.
A ‘discussion day’ was held when parents could come into school and the children had a day off. This is what is known as an Academic Mentoring Day. Instead of a Parents Evening when parents/carers (who may or may not attend) try to fit in several 5 minute meetings with each of the subject teachers, the Academic Tutoring Day is a much higher profile event and gives parents up to 30 minutes with the Form Tutor. In advance of the day the form tutor has gathered knowledge and progress scores across all subjects and is therefore able to summarise achievement to date and what needs to be done. Parents/carers get a choice of time during the day, and the attendance rate is much improved. Letters are sent home, parents chased up. It works well, but it does mean that in order to release the teachers from teaching the school is closed for the day.
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