Prime Minister praises school (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Prime Minister praises school

1:03pm Wednesday 31st October 2007 in News By Deborah Lewis

AN EAST Lancashire school has been held up as a beacon for best practice by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

In a speech on education today, Mr Brown paid tribute to Alder Grange Community and Technology College, Rawtenstall, for "leading the way" in engaging parents in their children's education.

Mr Brown said: "I want to involve and engage parents at every stage of the journey of their children's education.

"Many schools across the country are already leading the way on parental involvement and I want to pay tribute to them. Alder Grange for example offer a fantastic range of schemes including parental partnership evenings, courses and a helpful handbook for parents.

"Let us now spread the best practice of the best schools."

After the speech at the University of Greenwich, Iain Hulland, headteacher of the Calder Road school, said: "It's very nice to be mentioned, but a bit surprising!

"We have been taking a systematic approach to engaging parents over the last two years or so, as part of focusing on the growth of the whole child.

"We identified that influences outside of school can be greater that those inside; parents are children's first educators, so to maximise the impact we can have on pupils, we need to be working in partnership.

"The schemes have been a great success - the parents' handbook, with advice on all issues in and out of school that affect them, was our most ambitious, but a great success. The feedback from parents was fantastic and the model has now been rolled out to all Rossendale schools.

"There will always be some parents who are harder to reach, but I would commend this sort of partnership working at any school."

It is not the first time Alder Grange has been lauded for setting a national example; in 2006, Ofsted heralded the school as "an example to follow" for its citizenship education.

Inspectors deemed it an "outstanding" school after their inspection in October last year, and in the Ofsted's annual report highlighting exceptional schools released earlier this month, Alder Grange was one of a handful to be included for the third time.

Mr Hulland added: "It's always nice to be recognised, but it's always the result of a team effort and a great deal of commitment from everyone."