Last updated 07:45, Friday, 20 June 2008

BEACON HILL is not a failing school. Ofsted in November 2006 said it was ‘a school to be proud of’, and we take exception to being called a failing school.

JULIE RICHARDSON, head of Aspatria’s Beacon Hill School, puts the school’s case in response to a controversial Government report which last week included it on a list of 638 schools in England warned to improve or risk a threat of closure or merger.....

As a small school we are vulnerable to slight dips in individual student performance as every child counts for up to 2.5 per centage points.

It is true that last year we did not reach the arbitrary figure of 30 per cent A-star-C as two or three students failed to get C grades in maths and English.

Behind the figures are some individual stories of success and likewise of failure.

Sometimes life events affect a student and they find it difficult, despite all the help and support from their teachers, to reach the levels and grades they are estimated to get.

Measuring the relative success of a school by examination results alone is dependant on the ability of the year group of students involved.

The more able the pupils the better the results will be. A better indicator of performance is to look at value added scores.

Contextual value added (CVA) attempts to show the progress the individual students have made over a particular period and includes such factors as levels of deprivation, income of families, unemployment and mobility.

A school making expected levels of progress from KS2 to KS4 would have a score of 1000. Last year the county average for secondary schools was 993.6. Beacon Hill was above this figure at 1000.8 and in the previous year 1013.1.

These figures show we are successful. In our school, every child makes progress sometimes from a very low base.

For the past four years Beacon Hill School has steadily improved and was recognised by both the government and the Specialist Schools Trust in 2006 as one of the country’s most improved schools.

We are still making progress and we are still successful.

Our priority is and has always been on each individual student making sure that they achieve at or exceed their estimated grades.

To do this every member of staff including teachers and non teachers work extremely hard to keep the focus on the examinations.

At KS3 our priority is to make sure every child is ‘ready to learn’.

We have a dedicated learning mentor who works with the primary schools to aid transition and identifies learning barriers quickly so that when the student enters Beacon Hill they are ready to learn.

Systems and strategies are put in place to make sure we ‘hit the ground running’ and there is no time lost.

Activities such a circle time and nurture classes are organised alongside the education programme.

This September we are developing this further with a new ‘learn to learn’ course. This course has been developed in partnership with Keswick School who have introduced it in their school this year.

We are working closely with Keswick as a partner and Leading Edge School, sharing our ideas and practices in order that both schools can benefit and improve even further.

At KS4 every student is given a mentor, who works closely with our specialist KS4 academic mentor, to make sure each student is supported and encouraged to reach their target grades.

This, along with good teaching, monitoring and tracking and support from parents, makes sure that every child is given every chance to succeed. The leadership team are driven by the data and use this to predict and track and intervene early when necessary.

We hold after school revision classes in nearly every GCSE subject. We have run an Easter school for the past three years and coursework ‘catch up’ sessions. Every subject leader sets targets for every child and tracks progress. This year we ran revision sessions for parents and held a very successful mock revision day.

Nearly every one of our students reaches their targets but unfortunately for the one to two who don’t the school is condemned and seen to be failing by the government’s need to set arbitrary and controversial targets.

I invite anyone to come to our school for the day. They will see a focussed, happy, orderly learning environment where everyone is engaged in the business of education.