St Bart's applies for academy status
Another West Berkshire school has applied for academy status, to free itself from local authority control
ST Bartholomew's School in Andover Road, Newbury, has become the third school in West Berkshire to apply for academy status.
The school has submitted its application to the Department for Education and, if granted, it will join Newbury secondary school Park House, Andover Road, and Thatcham's Kennet School, in Stoney Lane, as an academy school in the district, free from the control of West Berkshire Council.
The headteacher at St Bart's, Christina Haddrell, said that the school was currently enjoying being a foundation school and that academy status would be an extension to that.
She said: “They (the governors) believe that a change in the status would provide a freedom of opportunity to maintain the excellent standard of education we give.
“As with all schools, one of the key things is how you manage cuts to education budgets.
“The new status would also maximise the financial opportunities for us.”
As a foundation school, St Bart's is currently state-funded but its governing body has greater freedom in the running of the school than in community schools, which are run wholly by the local education authority.
As an academy, it would become a publicly-funded, independent school, with the power to set staff pay and conditions, set its own curriculum (although it must adhere to the National Curriculum for English, mathematics, science and IT), and to change the length of terms and school days.
Academies are funded on the principle 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 no longer provided for them by the local authority.
The school is now waiting to hear back from the department of education about its application before deciding whether to move forward with it.
Kennet School was the first in the district to acquire academy status, in April this year; it originally put an application forward in November and it was fast-tracked because of its 'outstanding' Ofsted rating.
The current Ofsted rating for St Bart's school is 'good'.
