Our Friends in the North
Sheffield Park Academy
As we prepare to leave Church Schools and United Learning Trust many of the happiest moments have been with children around the schools. We made a whistle stop tour to Barnsley and Sheffield. We were thrilled to meet students on the schools councils or as ambassadors for their academy who were full of purpose. They displayed a self confidence which did not exist in the predecessor schools and yet they were exactly the same children from the same communities. It really is stunning to see what a change an academy can make.
Sheffield Springs Academy
It comes down to expectations and the courage to require young people to behave in a purposeful way and accept a disciplined approach to their lives. But both purpose and discipline are encouraged by more exciting teaching and a good range of extra curricular activities: these we constantly address – and need to!
- Barnsley Academy’s Foundation Day, 2006
Barnsley has moved from 7% 5A*-C, excluding English and Maths to over 50% including them both. This is due in large measure to the outstanding leadership of the Principal, Dave Berry, who himself found it a difficult transition to make – but my goodness how well he’s done it. Our photos show Jenny and me with Art students.
We also met an excellent range of teachers, underlining how many high calibre graduates are now entering the profession, prepared to join some of the most challenging schools.
The changes started a decade ago with the introduction of academies. I was privileged to be in at the start and owe much to the encouragement and vision of Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis. Even then it had cross party support and I am thrilled that the Coalition is putting its own vigour into the academy movement. I am impressed by my meetings with Michael Gove, Jonathan Hill and Nick Gibb. Education is having the energy and respect which every civilised society has to give it. The joy is that it is happening in a continuous way and not the pull to the right, pull to the left of some of the worst days of the 1960’s, 70’s and 80s. Our politicians are giving real leadership.
On the second evening Steve Rastall led his faithful team of helpers and students to prepare one of his very special suppers so that Jenny and I could be feted as a farewell. It was a wonderful occasion full of sentiment and not without a little emotion. All three Senior Leadership Teams of the Yorkshire Academies were with us and we felt all the warmth for which Yorkshire is famous.
In Sheffield both of our academies are now out of a category. This has been a tough and difficult time which we have all had to face up to. It has been achieved within the timeframe expected and which we presented to the then Secretary of State, Ed Balls.
Thanks for this go to our Senior Team, Kathy August and Antony Edkins, supported by each person in the two academies.
Sheffield Springs Foundation Day, Sep 2006
We had to achieve change quickly while at the same time pushing ahead with exam results. Last summer both academies moved out of National Challenge and stand every chance of doing so again even though the bar is higher this summer. This shows just how determined our students are.
At Sheffield Springs I was given a pottery model representing the new building with beautifully drawn scrolls of flowers inside – what an original and perceptive gift to a gardener who loves buildings.
The Academy Movement
At my final United Church Schools Trust Board meeting last Tuesday, we reflected on the major strides which we had taken over the past 20 years. 3,200 children in 7 schools had moved to 8,000 in 10 similar all age schools plus 1 Prep School. Standards in almost everything have been raised immeasurably. UCST has had some outstanding success stories, such as the leading position Guildford High School takes year after year in exam results, a cohort of music students leaving for different top conservatoire’s from Lincoln Minster School, the all round strengths of our largest school, Surbiton High School;
Surbiton's gymnasts who entered Britain's got talent
we have just heard the exciting news that the British Gymnastics Association have committed to an annual scholarship at Surbiton High School, which is to be awarded to a GB gymnast who would benefit from the academic education and gymnastics coaching that Surbiton High School can provide. Surbiton High School is the first school to receive such an award. Also, Year 9 girls have been involved in a Dragons Den activity today where they have been asked to come up with an innovative product based on the Olympic and Paralympic values and it is highly likely that some of these products will be adopted at the 2012 games. Surbiton High School has two Olympic gymnastic hopefuls and a member of the GB Olympic Ski Team.
Bombay Team Challenge - Jubilee Home
The story goes on but above all every child is encouraged and challenged to find talents and have the courage to develop them: to feel that education has no boundaries. The compassionate side of each school is demonstrated by the way in which overseas schools and other less fortunate are helped through visits and fund raising.
During this time we have invested £150 million in UCST for new school buildings, some as a result of the 10 mergers we have completed and all of this without going to the parents for appeals. We have charged modest fees and have used our money wisely enough to create surpluses to sustain this programme and its associated controlled borrowings. It is a serious achievement.
Then, as the millennium approached, we challenged ourselves to consider what our founders would have done if they had still been alive. The result has been the formation of the United Learning Trust with its 17 City Academies and 4 more joining us from the Emmanuel Schools Foundation. Our network extends from Shoreham in the South to Blyth in the North. Its been an extraordinary story of people helping and supporting each other to find deeper meaning in life through serving children, building for the future and based without exception on a deep love of children.
Charlotte Rendle-Short at Swindon Academy's Foundation Day, 2007
None of this would have happened at such pace or so convincingly without the help and friendship of Charlotte Rendle-Short. She joined us to lead Sunderland High School into its new co-educational life before joining me as Deputy Chief Executive. This story is as much hers as mine.
Outstanding Colleagues
All of this was reflected in the evening farewell dinner held in the Guard Room at Lambeth Palace. The Guard Room, with its walls lined wit the portraits of each Archbishop of Canterbury since Cranmer, is steeped in history – a medieval roof raised by the Victorians to give a greater sense of space – the scene of Disraeli and his cabinet being the last Prime Minister to dine formerly with an Archbishop until Margaret Thatcher did: Jenny and I were fortunate enough to have been guests with them, hearing her speak so supportively of Robert Runcie – the media would not have believed it!
The Archbishop, Rowan Williams, spoke warmly and said grace while our Chairman, his predecessor George Carey, proposed Jenny’s and my health. We were flabbergasted when we were presented with one of the late David Cox Watercolours which are at the very heart of English romantic painting, and a joy to behold. It was an extraordinarily generous gift and one which touched us very deeply, as did the friendship and love which surrounded us that evening.
As if that wasn’t enough, Gill had scouted out one of London’s very best curry houses for a farewell occasion for our Heads, Principals and Senior Staff.
We had a ball which finished with champagne at The Athenaeum for the survivors who didn’t have to catch trains. Charlotte Rendle-Short spoke and presented us with a book with photographs and quotations which stretched truth to the limit! There were also some wonderfully amusing anecdotes as well. It is something we will treasure.
Mike Buchanan, the Head of Ashford School, then presented us with a King James Bible specially inscribed for the occasion. At least the truth in that wasn’t stretched! Peter Hullah said grace for us in his own inimitable style.
There was to be no let up as Manchester wanted to ensure that Lancashire had the final say. The North Western Academies held a dinner at William Hume Grammar School where once again we were feted and overcome by the affection and generosity of spirit of everybody there. Jane Delfino spoke with warmth and verve reminding us of experiences which had meant the most to her. Antony Edkins then presented me with a magnificent decanter engraved with all of the academy names and addressed to the “Founding Father” I just didn’t know where to put myself.
I can recommend Manchester for a Saturday off. Jenny and I made a beeline for the City Art Gallery and were not disappointed. There was a huge range of things to look at without getting tired and certainly not getting bored. Some of the photographs of Greater Manchester in the 1960s and 70s were distressing in the conditions which applied to the housing, and certainly to children. 
I photographed two photographs of children who will be of the same generation as the parents of our academy students in Salford and Moss Side and realised what a tough upbringing many of them had experienced. It shook us to our roots when we thought how well they were supporting their children’s progress, eager to make sure that they would get on. Pilkington Glassware, paintings of Manchester in its pomp, and a wonderful collection of Pre-Raphaelites, a magnificent Turner seascape and intimate pictures by Gwen John and others in her circle. We never reached the Renaissance galleries so there is much to look forward to on a return visit.
The children had the last say and Manchester Academy put on an amazing performance of Moss High Musical. 
It was a portrayal of the transformation of Ducie High School into Manchester Academy full of quips and telling moments which made it an outstanding occasion. The music was vibrant, the acting lively and the rendering of Bridge over Trouble Water moved both Kathy and me to tears. At the end there was a slide show of each student saying what they wanted to do when they left school. One had that wonderful feeling that each one had seized the opportunity of achieving it. 
It was so different from the student who first took me round Ducie High School. When I asked her what she wished to do she said she wanted to be a Doctor and I wondered how a school that had only achieved between 3 & 13% GCSE 5 A* – C, not even including English and Maths, would ever be able to do so. It was her hope, so likely to be let down, that said loudly to me that as no other sponsor was prepared to take on Ducie High School we would have to do so. 
No child should ever have to be so wishful again.
The confidence of those children was a huge tribute to all the staff at Manchester Academy, Kathy August who has led them so brilliantly and to Jenny Langley who wrote and produced it for us.
Never Letting the Grass Grow Under Your Feet…
Sunday was back to Earth cutting the grass but with much to contemplate.
Together with Mighty Creative’s, Year 4 students at Kettering Buccleuch Academy did a wonderfully imaginative film of A Trip to Mars – it all looked most realistic which in fact was filmed in the school library. The children had obviously enjoyed it enormously and it was a great credit to everyone involved.
KBA Year 4 Trip to Mars
