We must do better – that's the call from councillors who want to see Weymouth and Portland's senior schools improve.

It comes after the chairman of a performance monitoring committee at Dorset County Council says he is shocked at the decline in a key education measure at all four Weymouth and Portland senior schools.

Cllr Ray Bryan, chairman of the Economic Growth and Scrutiny committee, called for urgent action – but was told there is limited help for two of the schools because both are now academies.

He told county councillors that young people only get one chance at education and to be let down by a failing system could affect their life chances.

“One year in a child’s educational life is so crucial. If we haven’t been doing as well as we should to the best possible level we should be ashamed. We need to do whatever we can…if we fail the children of this generation it’s a problem for years to come.”

Doug Gilbert, Advisor for Children’s Services said that on Key Stage 4 figures more than half of Dorset’s schools had stayed the same or got worse. He said the focus for concern was now on the four Weymouth and Portland schools where, overall, the figures were worse than expected.

“Our clear concern is for these four schools which have fallen right back,” he said.

Senior advisor for schools, Rosie Knapper, said Budmouth, Wey Valley, All Saints and IPACA were now measured as ‘below standard’ in Key Stage 4 results last year. IPACA has since become the Atlantic Academy.

She said that All Saints and Budmouth had been offered advice and guidance by County Hall staff with input also from the Regionals Schools Commissioner, Ofsted and other local State schools. Talks were also being held about finding funding.

But because Wey Valley and the Atlantic Academy were now effectively self-governing and managed independently, the help the council is able to offer was limited.

Weymouth councillor Jon Orrell said he feared that recovery for all four schools might be very difficult as all had suffered from financial cuts which he said ran into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

“In some cases that has equated to losing teachers. It’s very hard to recover when your budget is being cut and you are having to lose teachers.”

Mr Gilbert said some of the problems were made worse by the area being classed as socially deprived. The trend to focus on academic, rather than vocational subjects had also not helped results from some of the schools in the area.

He said that in the Chesil Schools area almost half of pupils who received free school meals had missed ten per cent or more of their lessons – above the national average.

Cllr Bryan said after the committee meeting that he would be discussing his concerns about the Weymouth and Portland schools at Cabinet level.

Also speaking after the meeting Cllr Orrell said: “We’ve been particularly hard hit in Weymouth and Portland; we’re the most deprived bit of the entire county and we’ve seen the funding really tumble in the couple of years.

"You can’t make cuts in funding without cuts in the educational outcome and that’s what we are now starting to see. The money’s been cut and now the standards are starting to fall.”

He said he believed it was not a management problem, but one of funding.

Councillors heard that Budmouth College is about to see a new principal begin work after the Easter break, earlier than the planned start in September.
 

Dorset Echo:

Sara Adams, principal of Wey Valley School and pictured above, said: "The Social Mobility Commission report of November 2017 points to Weymouth and Portland having the third lowest social mobility in the country.

"All headteachers in the area are working extremely hard to raise the aspirations of our young people and to provide them with a high quality education. We want the very best for them but, as the report points to, this cannot be achieved without better funding.

"The school funding crisis is real. But better outcomes for young people are not just about schools. Without quality, well funded wrap around services such as health, youth and social care our young people and their families cannot even access the full benefit of our education service."

Jonathan Heap, principal of Atlantic Academy, formerly IPACA, said: “We are very excited about the changes that have already happened at Atlantic Academy Portland.

"It is our aim that all students living on Portland, and the local area, are provided with an excellent education and we believe we are well on the way to achieving this. We have created and developed a very different culture from the previous Academy.

"We believe in an approach that gives students the knowledge base to lead on to creativity and much deeper understanding and mastery of subjects. We hold the highest of expectations, with the caring support of specialists, who will not ever lower their expectations of what a child can achieve."

The other schools were contacted for comment.