Academy news

Two schools have become converter academies this month: Wrotham School, and Woodlands Primary School in Gillingham, Medway. Woodlands was the subject of a building scandal in 2010, when due to failures of management by Medway Council the school finished up with a multi-million pound building project, without approval of the Council. The school now has total control of the new buildings.

Two poor performing Sittingbourne schools, both in Special Measures have also become sponsored academies, thus losing the Special Measures label as they are technically new schools. They are Kemsley Primary & Milton Court Primary, sponsored by REAch2. The company website states: “The structural vision for REAch2 is to build an Umbrella Trust of Multi-Academy Trusts (MAT)”. It is based in Hillyfield Academy, a SIX (!) form entry primary school in Walthamstow, growing to 1400 children under the age of eleven. REAch2 appears to have started in September with two other primary schools in Letchworth and Croydon, Six more are in the pipeline the others being in Brighton, Hornchurch, London and Purfleet this month, the group taking over Dover Road Primary, Northfleet, in September which is also in Special Measures, along with another primary school in Reading.

Just one new application this month, St Richard’s Catholic Primary School in Dover, federated to the troubled St Edmund’s Catholic School (see article below) and joining the majority of Kent Catholic schools, which are going through the same process.

I understand that the troubled Chaucer Technology College is being taken over by the Swale Academies Trust as a sponsored academy.

Free School news.......

OFSTED has published a highly critical emergency OFSTED Report on the Duke of York's Royal Military School in Dover. An emergency Report is triggered by concerns from parents of children at the school to the extent that OFSTED believes there is a case to answer. 

The Inspection team found that  "There was a serious bullying incident in May 2011 resulting in an internal inquiry by the governing body. This uncovered wider concerns regarding the safeguarding practices at the school. ....As a result, the school has undergone significant personnel changes with the departure of 16 staff, including members of the senior management team.... In September 2012 there were two serious welfare incidents affecting a particular year group of boarders. ....The resignations of staff led to staffing shortages in the medical centre. The impact of a diluted nursing provision has negatively affected the formal induction processes for newly appointed house matrons and some gaps are noted with regards to communication systems between the health centre and the boarding houses". Duke of York’s was a private school, .........

Not surprisingly, the headlines have been all about the battle for the old Wildernesse School site in Sevenoaks between the proposed new Trinity Christian Free School, the Secretary of State for Education being minded to award the site to the school, and the proposed new satellite grammar school sponsored by the  Valley Invicta Academy Trust, the land being currently owned by Kent County Council. You will find articles focusing on the Trinity School and the Satellite Grammar School below.

Meanwhile just one converter academy in Kent and Medway, Folkestone Christ Church CofE Primary School, has opened in March, the flow having reduced to a very small trickle in recent months. There are no new converter academy applications. We know that both Kent and Medway Local Authorities are working with an unspecified number of low achieving and failing primary schools encouraging/forcing them to become sponsored academies, usually taken over by one of the academy chains......

News about new academies and applications, site of Trinity Free School in Sevenoaks, controversy at proposed Free School in Wye, and a new proposal for a primary free school in Canterbury. 

Paul Carter, Leader of Kent County Council, has argued publicly that government run academies in Kent are funded more generously than schools managed by KCC, placing the latter at a disadvantage. I have uncovered, with the assistance of Kent on Sunday, a further stiff financial penalty imposed on KCC for some schools seeking to become academies. A letter from the Department for Education, posted on the proposed Ebbsfleet Academy website (contained in the only news item on the website!) dated May 2012 states: “We are working with Kent County Council to resolve an issue relating to PFI funding, which the Department for Education is keen to resolve as soon as possible. The Minister recently wrote to the Council, highlighting that holding up the school’s transition to Academy status does not help the Authority’s financial situation and poses risks to students’ interests. We are sure this is not the intention”. As a result, there is currently no new academy, and Swan Valley Community School in Swanscombe has encountered a variety of problems partly caused by the delay, as described in a previous article I wrote.  

What this really means is that KCC, which has responsibility for funding the Private Financial Initiative (PFI) contract for the Swan Valley Community school, is expected to still finance it if and when the school passes out of KCC control to central government. This in spite of the fact that as academies are fully funded by government, KCC would receive no income to pay what is called the “affordability gap”.......

Kentadvice is a website that almost always confines itself to local issues, but the above headline in today's Independent on Sunday, deserves wide circulation in view of the alarming proposals it puts forward, although it does yet not appear to have been picked up by other news outlets. The newspaper reports that: 'A confidential memo drawn up by Michael Gove's department reveals that soaring numbers of academies means the government will not be able to fund the programme within two years. Mr Gove, who last week abandoned his plans to scrap GCSEs. is looking at "reclassifying academies to the private sector", the document reveals, allowing them to be profit making'.  The article goes on........

As Reported below, the Academies Enterprise Trust (AET), which effectively ran The Marlowe Academy in the last school year, made limited progress in its attempts to improve standards at the academy, overseeing a failed OFSTED. It then made limited progress in two subsequent monitoring Inspections and paved the way for the most recent barely adequate one.  

It also took over three Maidstone primary schools in April 2012, including the previous Bell Wood Primary School which became Tree Tops Academy. OFSTED has now carried out its first monitoring Inspection eight months after AET took over the school which was previously in Special Measures. The summary conclusion of "Having considered all the evidence I am of the opinion that at this time the academy is not making enough progress in raising standards for all pupils. This visit has raised serious concerns and the timing of the academy’s next inspection may be affected" is surely an indictment of the academy chain's input to this school. 

Some excerpts from the Report:.....

The Marlowe Academy failed its OFSTED for the second time, in November 2011, and it was obvious from the Report and letters to parents that Governors and Trustees were still failing to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation. You will find my comments on the first monitoring inspection in March which did nothing to dispel that theory. The third monitoring Inspection report has now been published, and this, together with student numbers and comments made to me,  lead me to seriously ask the question - does the Marlowe Academy have a future? On numbers alone, it is difficult to see how the school is financially viable, with the intake falling year on year to the disastrous September 2012 figure of 62, filling just over a third of the 180 places available. This is a further drop of 19 children from the 81 places offered in  March, although this figure was disputed by a senior member of the Academy who either didn't understand the seriousness of the problem, or was misled into believing the take up was much higher. 

Unsurprisingly, the link to OFSTED Reports on the Academy website is non-functioning (its been fixed since this item was fist published!), and there is no mention of the recent Monitoring Inspection. This Inspection underlines the problem of viability, revealing that .......

Warden House Primary School in Dover has become an academy. Also the failed Sherwood Park Community Primary School which has become the Temple Grove Academy, sponsored by Temple Grove Schools Trust and Loughborough Federation (a Federation of primary schools in Lambeth). New Kent applications to become academies are five further Catholic schools: two secondary - St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury and St John's Catholic Comprehensive School, Gravesend; and St Francis Catholic Primary School, Maidstone; St Joseph's Catholic Primary School, Northfleet; St Gregory's Catholic Primary School, Margate. Also Bromstone Primary School, Broadstairs. No change this month in Medway, although Medway Council is looking at handing over some of its low performing primary schools to academy chains, as is already happening in Kent. Of course, the evidence is that Medway Council has responsibility for that low performance, so this action is a way of removing the Council's  problem of how to improve its performance.  A full list of Kent and Medway academies can be found here. 

It appears to be the Catholic church policy to turn all its Kent schools into academies. 

Latest information on the four Free Schools on course to open in September 2013: ..........

Updated to include December: 7 December. 

In Kent, there were nine new Sponsored Academies created since September 2012: High Weald Academy, created from the failed Angley Sports College in Cranbrook, sponsored by Hayesbrook Schoool in Tonbridge; Hersden Village Primary School, sponsored by Sturry CofE Primary School; St Laurence in Thanet CofE Junior School, sponsored by the Anglican Diocese of Canterbury; and Dame Janet Community Infant School, Dame Janet Communty Junior School, Drapers Mill Primary School, Newlands Primary School,  Northdown Primary School and Salmestone Primary School, all in Thanet and all sponsored by the Kemnal Academies Trust from Orpington, together with.......