North schools 'are ahead of game'

Jan 1 2009 by Dave Black, The Journal

LESSONS learned in the creation of a pioneering, 3,000-pupil super school in Northumberland have been highlighted at a prestigious international education conference in the USA.

Six headteachers from the ground-breaking Ashington Learning Partnership Trust travelled to Louisville, Kentucky, recently for the special summit meeting on education. They shared their experiences in developing the all-age, five school partnership with leading figures from education around the world. Yesterday Ken Tonge, strategic head of the partnership, said the trip had shown that the Ashington system was a decade ahead of what was happening in the USA.

The trust – which comprises Ashington High School, Bothal and Hirst Park Middle Schools and Wansbeck and Central First Schools – was one of the first 12 of its kind to be established in 2007.

It involves a single, all-age learning organisation and has developed new curriculum structures and ways of delivering education which aim to reduce the problems of transferring between schools.

Mr Tonge was accompanied on the trip to Kentucky by trust headteachers Rob Kitching, Paul Coulson, Mick Spencer, Dave Godfrey and Andy Roberts. It was funded by the British Council and the Youth Sports Trust. Yesterday Mr Tonge said: “It was a very interesting exercise and we met other educational leaders from around the world, as well as having the opportunity to get into all-age schools over there.

“The message we came back with is that our system in Ashington is about 10 years ahead of what they have in the United States. We feel we have no worries about where we stand in respect of educational development, and that we are ahead of the game. We expect to have quite a lot of visitors from the United States to see what we are doing. It was very interesting to see what they are doing in America in terms of large class sizes and extra-curricular activities like music and sport being built into the curriculum.”