December 14th Newsletter

Dear Parents

Since our last newsletter the Government has published its White Paper on the future of education. There is much in this and at present not a great deal of concrete information, but there are aspects which we applaud and St Peter’s is already well equipped to deliver.

• The English Baccalaureate is a new qualification for GCSE pupils which is going to be available. We will look forward to offering this to students who are able to achieve it and want to take the opportunity of gaining this new qualification. Our curriculum is such that it seems we will not need to make major changes to offer this new possibility and we will be talking in more detail to year 9 parents when things are clearer.

• It is suggested that new GCSE league tables will be compiled showing the ‘percentage of year 11 students achieving 5 or more A* to C passes to include English, maths and science’. The Government is stating it should be a minimum of 35%; last year at St Peter’s 60% of year 11 achieved this. A marvellous reflection of good comprehensive education.

• The Government has confirmed its commitment to Academies and we are still progressing our information gathering exercise on this issue. We are fully aware that there is a number of secondary schools in the county who will be progressing to academy status over the next 12 months. We, however, will not move until we are assured that the underlying ethos of St Peter’s can be fully protected. We are working with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Clifton and our national Catholic Education Service to get agreement from the Government on this essential question related to the religious nature of our school. We are also talking with our Stroud and Gloucester Catholic primary schools as we do not want to be in a position where our primary schools are left with little support because of the dire financial situation of the Local Authority.

• The Government is moving teacher training at every level to be more school-based, by building on the training school designation which St Peter’s enjoys. It intends to set up centres of excellence in teaching and learning based in specific schools. St Peter’s is ideally placed to be one of these centres of excellence as our training school team is noted as being outstanding within Gloucestershire and beyond. We do of course at present assist many schools in their development.