School celebrates change of fortunes

Oct 18 2007 by Urmee Khan, The Journal

A NEWCASTLE school which was once judged as having serious weaknesses was celebrating a remarkable change in fortunes yesterday after being given an “outstanding” rating by education inspectors for the first time.

Canning Street Primary School in Benwell is one of 57 schools in Tyne and Wear, County Durham and Northumberland in Ofsted’s annual list of outstanding schools, along with a number of nurseries, childminders and playgroups.

The school was once judged as having serious weaknesses – Ofsted’s rating for a school that is failing its pupils. But yesterday headteacher Dame Mavis Grant said: “I’m absolutely thrilled. In 1998, before I was brought in as head, the school was reported to have weak overall standards with weak leadership and management.

“We turned it around in just 18 months after a lot of very hard work from everyone. Then in 2001, we were reassessed as a ‘good’ school and then we were declared an ‘outstanding’ school in every category, which was just amazing and even better than we expected. Last year we were one of a 100 top performing schools in the country. And we’ve done this mostly through teamwork, without many changes with staff.”

Sele First School in Hexham and the Biddick Hall Junior School in South Shields also joined the elite band after being named outstanding for a third time.

Sele headteacher Maggie Anderson said: “It’s an absolutely wonderful achievement for the school. It really emphasises that we’ve done a good job and it’s so nice to be told that for a third time. It recognises the hard work and energy and enthusiasm of the huge team involved. It shows consistent achievement over a decade.The key to our success is team work and about utilising the enthusiasm and the commitment of the staff and parents, who are the biggest stakeholders of our children.”

‘Outstanding’ schools are given a distinctive logo which they can use on documents and their website to communicate their achievement.

Biddick Hall County Junior School headteacher Ian Mills said: “We’ve all worked hard and it’s nice that the school can receive some recognition, especially when you consider reports that children are increasingly under pressure and getting depressed. But not at our school, we are all delighted and thrilled that we’ve been performing so well and to get the highest grading is very good news.”

For the first time, adult learners have also been included in the annual Ofsted report. David Ansell, deputy director of learning skills, visited the Chinese Centre in Waterloo Street, Newcastle, yesterday, to commend the provisions made for adult learners in the Chinese community.

Mr Ansell said: “The Chinese centre, has been recognised as an outstanding provider of adult education. The focus is to help the community develop its literacy and develop skills for employment gains. Since April this year, Ofsted has taken over responsibility of post-19 adult training and learning and this is positive as one single document will show all educational gains for all – from children aged three to adult learning which has no upper limit.”

To read Ofsted reports on schools in your area visit www.ofsted.gov.uk 

See a list of the North-East's outstanding schools on page 2