Academy Status Latest

Wednesday 30 March 2011

Cirencester Deer Park School will convert to Academy status on Friday 1 April. However, we wish to reassure pupils, parents and our partners in the community that this will be a seamless transition. We will remain Cirencester Deer Park School. We will continue to provide access to free comprehensive education to young people between the ages of 11-16 in Cirencester and the areas around the town.

Following the general election in May 2010, the coalition government invited 'outstanding' schools to convert to Academy status. The DFE defines the new academies as 'a publicly funded schools, free from local authority and national government control.'

The governors of Cirencester Deer Park School initially registered an interest in becoming an academy June 2010, but we have deliberately taken our time to ensure this change in the way the school is publicly funded is the right way forward for the school and we have consulted with parents, the community and our partners locally, including the Local Authority with whom we plan to continue to work closely.

Jo Grills, Director, Learning and Development, Children and Young People's Services responded, 'We welcome the school's vision that the proposed change to Academy status will support collaborative working with others and its commitment to continue to work and share information with the Local Authority. We also support the governors' stance that conversion to Academy status will focus on the needs of all learners and its wider community.'

As a Foundation and former Grant Maintained School, the Leadership Team and Governing Body are experienced in strategic financial management and are accustomed to operating with a degree of autonomy. We are committed to meeting the needs of our learners. We provide high quality learning opportunities within our outstanding curriculum provision. The school is exeptionally well resourced and maintained in good order.

Being a lead school in management of change is embedded within our aims. Therefore the transition to academy status reflects an evolution not a revolution.

Philip Beckerlegge is optimistic. He has been a member of the school's governing body for 25 years and is currently Chair of Governors. He describes Academy status as a 'natural' progression in our strategic financial management. 'The school and the governing body have an excellent record of successful innovation. We pioneered Local Management in Schools in the 1980s and took advantage of the opportunities inherent in Grant Maintained Status in 1990s and Foundation Status in 2000s to ensure we could maximise the resources available to enable us to deliver the best outcomes for our learners and their life chances'.

In the last decade as a 'high performing specialist school', we developed a broad and balanced curriculum at Cirencester Deer Park through our specialisms in Technology, the Arts and Applied Learning. These ensured we developed our expertise in the core subjects, Maths, Science and English, as well as personalising other areas of the curriculum and reflected our comprehensive ethos. Pupils at Deer Park thrive and achieve positive outcomes. Furthermore we have made a wider contribution to raising achievement in Gloucestershire through our Training School and Leading Edge Partnerships.

'It was clear from the lessons observed that the high attainment and outstanding achievement of all groups of students are matched by their development as thoughtful, confident and enterprising young people', Ofsted, May 2010.

The additional funding the school received for these initiatives however, has ceased. In the changing educational landscape, the Education White Paper, published in November 2010, provided a clearer direction and we plan to take advantage of the opportunity to further shape the school's character, frame our own ethos and develop our own specialisms. The additional funding we will receive as an Academy will enable use to build on the legacy of these programmes and further enhance the outstanding care guidance and support we provide for all of our learners. As an Academy, we intend to:

• Build on our current strengths as an outstanding 11-16 high performing specialist comprehensive school
• Focus on the needs of learners in Cirencester and the surrounding area
• Seize the agenda, work collaboratively and take advantage of the 'new' freedoms
• Re-state our aims and redefine our provision for the second decade of the 21st Century.

Academy status heralds a new era for Cirencester Deer Park School and we are excited about the future. As custodians of the school and its comprehensive ethos, we fully appreciate the legacy of the past and value the contributions of our staff. We plan to build on our strengths and we will take measures to ensure that our outstanding provision is sustainable in these difficult financial times. We are a reflective, resilient and resourceful school and we will continue to be outward facing. We will endeavour to ensure our learners continue to benefit from the experiences partnerships bring on a local, national and international scale. We are keen to work closely with our neighbouring schools and we are already engaged in discussions which we hope will lead to closer collaboration in line with the government's vision behind our new status: 'Our direction of travel is towards schools as autonomous institutions collaborating with each other…' (The Education White Paper, November 2010).

Chiquita Henson
Head