Local schools to become academies

Kennet School in Thatcham and Park House School in Newbury have been given Government approval to become academies

THE first two West Berkshire schools have been given Government approval to become academies.

Park House School in Newbury and Kennet School in Thatcham officially received academy status by the Department for Education last Thursday (31), meaning they will no longer be run by the local education authority, West Berkshire Council.

Paul Dick, the headteacher at Kennet School, which is the first to have officially been declared an academy, said that he was delighted with the announcement.

The school in Stoney Lane originally put an application forward in November and it was fast-tracked because of its ‘outstanding' Ofsted rating.

Mr Dick said that in the short term he did not expect anybody to see a difference, but added: "In the long term we plan to have a curriculum that's better suited to the pupils and invest money and resources in an even sharper way."

"The process is bureaucratic and complex and there was a lot of hard work involved to make sure the transfer was smooth.

"We plan to exploit the freedom to accelerate the progress of those at the school."

Park House will officially be declared an acdemy on May 1, and headteacher of the Andover Road school, Derek Peaple, said a significant amount of work had been done to make sure there would be a smooth transition.

He also said this was an opportunity to be able to further open up their sports facilities to members of the public.

"We are thrilled as the approval reflects what we have already achieved,” he added.

"This is a powerful vision for the new opportunities for our students and the wider community.

"It will be a significant opportunity to even further widen our curriculum.

"Ofsted said ours was outstanding and there's the challenge - to improve that.

"We are delighted with the progress we have made."

The move means that the two schools will now be publicly funded, independent schools that can benefit from greater freedoms to help innovate and raise standards.

These include freedom from local authority control, the ability to set staff pay and conditions, freedom from following the National Curriculum and the ability to change the lengths of terms and school days.

The principle of academies' funding is that they should receive the same level of per-pupil funding as they would receive from the local authority as a maintained school.

In addition, they receive top-up funding to meet additional responsibilities that are no longer provided for them by the local authority.

Both headteachers said that they planned to mark the transition of their schools to academies with a special event.

Currently, these are the only two West Berkshire schools progressing academy status conversion, although several other local schools expressed an interest in opting out of the state system last year, including Little Heath School in Tilehurst, Ramsbury Primary School, The Priory Primary School in Tadley, St Bartholomews School in Newbury, the Downs School, Compton and Theale Green Community School.