Balls: Carlisle failure won’t derail academies

Jan 31 2009 by Peter Leathley, The Journal

SCHOOLS Secretary Ed Balls last night said the Government would press ahead with its academies programme, just days after a flagship school in Carlisle was placed into special measures.

Mr Balls said he remained a “big supporter” of the initiative and that evidence showed they were delivering “faster rising results in deprived communities”.

Earlier this week, Richard Rose Central Academy in Carlisle became only the second academy to be put into special measures by Ofsted.

Peter Noble, chief executive of the Richard Rose Federation which runs the school, previously had a career in the health service. He, and the academy’s head, Mark Yearsley, have left their posts.

Ofsted’s report of the school this week said that the school’s opening had been brought forward a year as part of the Government’s fast track programme.

It said this “acceleration” had created challenges bigger than the leaders and managers could cope with.

But Mr Balls said: “Where you have got school under-performing, and an academy offers a new resource and new leadership, than naturally people will want to move quickly, and that pressure cones from local authorities and parents as well as from the Government.”

Mr Balls said his department was monitoring events in Carlisle closely.

He acknowledged that on occasion there had been difficulties with new academies because of “problems of integration of schools“ or “issues of leadership”.

And he endorsed the swift action to remove the academies’ leadership.

Academy schools, introduced by Tony Blair, are a flagship measure of Government education policy. It wants to see 200 academies, semi-independent schools with backing from private sponsors, opened by 2010.