Sheffield City Council APPENDIX 1 Children & Young People’s Service Abbeydale Grange Consultation Consultation Period 14 September – 23 October 2009 Introduction This document contains information about Sheffield City Council’s proposal to close Abbeydale Grange Secondary School. The information is for consultation with: • Parents and carers, governors, staff and pupils of Abbeydale Grange and its feeder schools; • Members of the local community; • Other interested parties. The purpose of the consultation is for the Council to: • Explain the reasons for proposing to close Abbeydale Grange; • Set out the implications of closure for all stakeholders; • Consider whether there are alternative options; • Listen to the views and comments of those affected by the proposal; • Record responses and report back to Cabinet Members. Consultation will take place between 14 September and 23 October 2009. The consultation process will provide a range of opportunities for information sharing and feedback: • Meetings • Discussions groups • Surgeries • E-mail and postal address How to give your feedback Contact us directly If you want to let us know your views about Abbeydale Grange – what you think about the option of closure, whether there are specific issues we need to think about, or whether there is another option that you would prefer – you can contact us directly and we will make sure your views are passed to Councillors to help them make a decision. Here is how to contact us: E-mail: [email protected] Post: Abbeydale Grange Consultation (Ref JH), School Organisation Team, Floor 6, Derwent House, 150 Arundel Gate, Sheffield S1 2JY Attend a meeting Come along to a meeting and ask your questions or express a view. There are meetings at Abbeydale Grange and at the feeder primary schools throughout the consultation period. A full list of consultation meetings is given at the end of the document. 1 Why is closure being considered? The Council started on a review of Abbeydale Grange in December 2008. The reasons for carrying out a review were the Council’s concerns about the levels of pupil progress and attainment at Abbeydale Grange, and the unpopularity of the school amongst parents in the local area. These issues together raise a serious question about the future viability of Abbeydale Grange. What made the timing of the review more urgent was that the Council needs to decide whether spending £14m of government money to upgrade Abbeydale Grange’s buildings is good value for money. In addition, because Abbeydale Grange is not meeting the government’s new floor target for attainment (30% or more of pupils achieving A*-C at GCSE including English and Maths), there is a requirement for the Council to show that there is a robust and sustainable plan for Abbeydale Grange to improve its attainment. In the review, the Council also chose to discuss the approach to educating pupils that are newcomers to the city from other countries because Abbeydale Grange has a large number of newcomers on its pupil roll. The Council said that the outcomes of the review must be that: • young people attending Abbeydale Grange get better results and an improved experience of school; • parents living in the Abbeydale Grange catchment area have access to a catchment school in which they have confidence as a place to send their child; • children newly arrived in Sheffield from other countries get fair access to good education which meets their needs. These issues are set out in more detail below. Pupil Progress and Attainment The level of pupil progress and attainment at Abbeydale Grange has been a matter of concern for some time. Results at GCSE fell between 2006 and 2008 to a low level in comparison to Sheffield and national averages. During 2008 Abbeydale Grange was identified under the National Challenge as one of eight schools in Sheffield not meeting the Government’s new floor target of 30% or more pupils achieving 5 A*-C at GCSE including English and Maths. The Council’s own assessment was that Abbeydale Grange is at high risk of not meeting this target and moving sustainably above this target by the deadline of 2011. For schools in this position, the Government expects Councils to consider the possibility of structural change as a solution to the problem. A structural change might include closure, replacement with an academy, a trust, or a hard federation (a partnership with another school under a single governing body). During the review period, further evidence was provided by an Ofsted inspection which placed Abbeydale Grange in ‘Special Measures’. The inspection found that the progress of pupils was unsatisfactory, that leadership and management were inadequate and that the school did not have the tracking systems in place to judge attainment and progress outcomes. Although the school has recently been judged to be making satisfactory progress in addressing the concerns raised by Ofsted, there is a considerable way to go before Abbeydale Grange can demonstrate that concerns about the quality of teaching and learning have been addressed. Furthermore, the Council needs to be convinced that Abbeydale Grange can maintain its improvement in a sustainable way. 2 Low Parental Preference For many years Abbeydale Grange School has struggled to attract pupils from the local area. Currently, 9 out of 10 pupils in the catchment area (including Dobcroft) choose to attend other schools mainly in the South West. Other South West schools (King Ecgberts, High Storrs, Silverdale, Tapton and King Edward VII) have sufficient places to take all of the pupils that apply from their own catchment, as well as many from the Abbeydale Grange catchment, and still have room for some pupils from outside the area. According to the survey of parents of pupils in Y6 carried out in the review period, the reasons why parents don’t choose Abbeydale Grange include concerns about attainment and behaviour, but also a perception that other local schools, all of which have sixth forms and much higher levels of attainment, would provide better opportunities for their child. These trends in parental preference are long-standing. Due to the low intake from the catchment area, some of Abbeydale Grange’s available places have tended to fill mid-year with pupils that are newly arrived in the city or that have moved from other schools. This unstable pupil population is very challenging for Abbeydale Grange to manage well and is likely to have contributed to difficulties in raising attainment. The number of pupils needing secondary school places in Sheffield will fall steeply in the next six years. Abbeydale Grange’s number on roll is already very low by national standards. There is a high probability that with lower admissions at Year 7 and higher year groups leaving, that the school’s roll will continue to fall significantly from its current 550 towards 400 or even below. As the pupil roll falls, Abbeydale Grange will have fewer resources to be able to lead and manage the curriculum and will find it more challenging to provide a good quality of education. While secondary school intakes across the city will start to rise from 2014 (including in Abbeydale Grange’s catchment), growth in Abbeydale Grange’s numbers is unlikely to come from positive parental preference. Provision for Pupils that are Newcomers to the City Abbeydale Grange has a larger number of pupils that are new to the city from other countries than other schools. This is as a result of its available places and also because Abbeydale Grange has been very welcoming to these pupils and their families. Abbeydale Grange is praised for its care and commitment to newcomer pupils and for its culture of respect for diversity, but the Ofsted inspection highlighted that pupil progress needed to improve. The Council endorses the principles identified in the review that newly-arrived pupils should be educated in mainstream rather than segregated settings and that personalised support for pupils and families should be accessible within the local community. Summary The Council’s role is to ensure that every child in Sheffield has the opportunity to access a good quality of secondary education and fulfil their potential. Where there are serious concerns that this is not the case, the Council must step in and act. Not only must the Council ensure that immediate action is taken to improve the prospects for young people currently at Abbeydale Grange, but it must be satisfied that the school is on a footing to deliver a good quality of education into the future. That work must go alongside the need to make sure that more local parents see their local school as their first choice. Further, the Council must now make sure that it makes the right long term decisions when investing the money available for secondary schools through the Building Schools for the Future programme. These are the questions that Sheffield has to consider about Abbeydale Grange, and why it is considering whether closure is an appropriate option. 3 What alternative options have been considered? At the outset of the review, the Council set out what it believed to be the main options that might be considered for the future of Abbeydale Grange. It was important that the option that the Council would ultimately adopt should address the three main issues: improve attainment, raise the confidence of local parents, and provide at least as good or better education for pupils new to the city. During the review, the options were discussed by an Advisory Group which included representatives from Abbeydale Grange, its parents, governors, members of the local community and Council officers. A summary of the Council’s assessment of the options is given in the bullet points below.