Nelson school escapes ‘academy’ move (From Lancashire Telegraph)

This is a real pity.

For some odd reason local parents have been lied to by Labour politicians that being an Academy is a bad thing.

This school being an Academy would have greatly improved the school.

Labour are against the policy because they believe all schools should be equal... unfortunately this means equally awful !

Instead of falling for Labour's lies, the tories should have defended the decision and explained the benefits of becoming an Academy and the positive things it would have achieved.

Allowing schools to become academies is only of the only decent policies the coalition has come up with so far!

The school did not "escape" becoming an Academy, It was prevented from becoming an Academy and is now still imprisoned and hampered by Council Control and at the Political whim of the Incompetent.

The reason why the majority of schools like this are failing is due to in-effective school governors who do not hold the headmaster and the senior management team to account. The decline in educational standards in such schools has been in decline for a number of years, action is required to remedy the situation immediately otherwise the standard of education in the area will be very poor and young people and parents are suffering. The first thing that is required to happen is that the Governors in schools should be suitable for the role in the first place, in some schools from the local area they do not even have a proper command of the english language yet alone having the qualities to scrutinise. Secondly there needs to be an overview of the Chair of Governors and conflicts of interest, for example Marsden Community Primary School Chair Of Governors is a former staff member, ridiculous! Three, there is a 2 tier system in place in these governor committees, 2 or 3 people have to great an influence on the committee, the rest are tokenistic gestures to make the process look legitamate. Until this does not change and the leadership team are not scrutinised properly I am afraid this will continue to be the case. Party Politics should be put to one side, it is more important that our children receive a good sound education for the benefit of the local community in the future.

Unfortunately, the evidence shows that becoming an academy does not improve exam results. What does improve is the amount of money being spent on pr companies persuading the country that academies are a good thing. If you look at the 2011 GCSE results there is a huge difference between the 5 A-C E/M results when vocational courses are included and when they are not. In other words, academies have forced children into doing vocational courses just to boost their results. For the majority of academies, the English Bacc results display a disgraceful performance.

In 2011 (no access to 2012 results yet) a higher proportion of Academies fell below the benchmark and showed worse result than in 2010 when compared to local authority schools.

The academy and "free" schools programme is a hugely expensive failed experiment.

Ermysteds Grammar at Skipton with some of the best exam results in the north of England has declined to become an academy. Speaks volumes.

I must take issue with this term ‘failing schools’ that Michael Gove and his minions constantly trot out as their justification for privatising all of England’s schools. Whether a school is failing, and the extent of that failure, is for OFSTED to judge by inspection not for ministers by inference.
Walverden Primary School has been featured in the press in recent weeks and on the regional news programme on BBC TV on Thursday 12th July when the story was prefaced by describing Walverden as one of the ‘failing schools’.
It is true that after an OFSTED inspection in March 2010 Walverden was issued with a notice to improve. A great deal of effort has been put in by the staff, the governors and the Local Authority to address the concerns of OFSTED. At the next inspection in June 2011 OFSTED gave a judgement of satisfactory stating that “Leaders and the governing body, with the support of the local authority, have rigorously tackled weaknesses in teaching, set more challenging targets and systematically tracked the progress of individual pupils towards meeting these targets. As a result, the quality of teaching has improved and is now good and underpinning the rapidly improving progress.” Rapidly improving progress is not a characteristic of a failing school.
One of the criticisms from the OFTED report of 2010 was the attendance rates. A great deal of effort has been put in to improve the level of attendance using a variety of strategies co-ordinated by an excellent attendance officer, Mrs Wendy Crossley. So far this academic year attendance at Walverden Primary is 96.7%, significantly higher that the governments’ target of 95%. High attendance is not a characteristic of a failing school.
Lancashire County Council have some excellent primary practitioners among their advisory teams who have worked with the staff at Walverden in order to improve the quality of teaching. In June 2011 OFSTED rated the quality of teaching as grade 2 (good). Good teaching is not a characteristic of a failing school.
With regard to safeguarding OFSTED reported that “Safeguarding arrangements exceed national requirements and the governing body is very active in ensuring it carries out its safeguarding responsibilities.” Exceeding national requirements is not a characteristic of a failing school.
Some years ago Walverden never won anything in inter school sport competitions, now Walverden are regular winners of a variety of sports events. Success in inter school sports is not a characteristic of a failing school.
What Mr Gove and his cronies are not taking into account is the level of knowledge the children at Walverden have upon entering the school in reception, in educational terms the baseline. For a variety of reasons the baseline at Walverden is one of the lowest in the country so the effectiveness of the education given to those children should not only be judged by the results of the key stage 2 SATs (attainment) but should also be measured by the progress that the children make during their time in school (Achievement).
The new OFTED framework that comes into effect in September 2012 describes ‘good achievement’ as “Pupils are making better progress than all pupils nationally given their starting points.” Given that their starting point is particularly low the progress that is now being made by children at Walverden is good. This will be evidenced when the results of this year’s SATs are published in the autumn term.
My contention is that Walverden Primary School is far from ‘failing’ and that the strategies that have been implemented by the school, in partnership with the Local Authority, are working.
Walverden Primary School is a “rapidly improving” school.

Well said Philip - I agree with every word.