St Alban's Academy in Birmingham takes a big step forward

Sep 15 2009 by Diane Parkes, Birmingham Mail

WHEN the school doors of St Alban’s opened this September, its pupils were walking into history as the school became one of the first in the city to become an academy.

Founded in 1871, St Alban’s has its own heritage as a voluntary aided Church of England school but it is now one of the first three schools in Birmingham to take on the academy mantle.

And head teacher David Gould says it is time for the school to step forward.

“This is the next stage in our development,” he says. “We have been working towards this point for three years and there is a genuine feeling of excitement at the changes that are happening.”

Last week the school opened with a fanfare with a special celebration involving Bishop of Birmingham the Right Reverend David Urquhart and Sparkbrook and Small Heath MP Roger Godsiff. And this week the 435 pupils are getting used to those changes.

While some, such as new uniforms, could be judged as cosmetic, others, such as new staff, longer working days, a shift away from the national curriculum and a more clearly defined behaviour policy, are altering their school days. And David Gould is convinced these changes are all for the better.

“We are now able to move forward with the freedoms that being an academy involves,” he says. “We are taking the ethos of our sponsors ARK and looking at depth before breadth. That is the key. We wanted to do something like this before but we were restricted by the national curriculum.

“We will be giving a lot of extra time to literacy with some children having 12 hours a week of literacy. There is no point in subjecting young people of 11 to the whole of the national curriculum if they cannot read or write.

“All of our pupils will be doing five hours a week of English and five hours a week of maths as it is imperative that those basics are in place.

“Our school day now lasts from 8.30am until 4pm. And we have more teachers to deliver those lessons.

“Our behaviour policy is now clearer and simpler and is backed by firmer and non-negotiable sanctions. These have been explained to children and parents and all of the staff will be working consistently with it.”

And taking the school forward is also imperative as St Alban’s faces particular challenges. In 2003 it was one of six secondary schools in Birmingham threatened with closure by the Government after league tables revealed fewer than 15 per cent of pupils were obtaining the benchmark five GCSEs graded between A* and C.

And it has been termed a National Challenge School – one in which below 30 per cent of pupils are achieving the Government’s 2008 higher standard of five GCSEs in grades A*-C.

This year St Alban’s has reached that new figure but in a school where 70 per cent of pupils speak English as their second language and some children have no English at all when they arrive, the school is running at a disadvantage before it even starts.