Academy Status

Dear Parents
I am delighted to inform you that we have had
confirmation that St Peter’s will change to an
Academy on the 1st August 2011. As I have constantly
said to you, you should see very little change in what
happens at St Peter’s with regard to us becoming an
Academy. The whole purpose of the Governors
making the decision was to preserve what we have
and the reasons why you sent your children to us in
the first place. I cannot commend highly enough the
work Business Manager, Steve Lester and our
Chairman of Governors, Jim Stenson have done to
bring this to fruition. They have put in countless hours
dealing with what at times looked liked a bureaucratic
quagmire and yet have come through to deliver ‘the
goods’. I am also delighted to inform you that it looks
as though four of our Primary Schools will be joining
us as academies and that all five RC Primaries in the
Gloucester and Stroud deaneries will be working with
us in partnership. We will be working very closely
together with them and of course the other Catholic
Primary Schools in the deaneries of Gloucester and
Stroud over the coming years.
What has not been so pleasing has been the constant
changing of demands from Government to acquire
academy status. It appears as if the goal posts are
being moved on a daily basis and this is never more
apparent than in the funding of the academies. You
may well have seen an article in the Citizen newspaper
concerning how Gloucestershire secondary schools
will be deprived of millions of pounds owing to a
change in the funding mechanism for academies. This
really is a total nonsense as Gloucestershire is already
one of lowest funded authorities per pupil amount in
the country. To make matters worse authorities
completing an essential form in a totally different way
has brought about different results. It is inexplicable
and unacceptable! In our case it means that the way
Gloucestershire County Council has completed the
form has cost our school the best part of £300,000.
That means we will therefore be better off to the tune
of £350,00 in the first year as opposed to the
£650,000 that we were looking at when we started
thinking about changing to an academy.
Gloucestershire Association of Secondary Heads is
working with the local County Council, elected
members and MPs to try and persuade the
Government that this situation is nonsensical and that
parents will not accept it. I am on a national working
group to try and bring about fairer funding of
education with a national formula for funding and yet
the way an authority completes a form actually makes
our situation worse. It means our young people are
worth £200 less per year than our neighbouring
county of Worcestershire. How can this possibly be
just? As I previously indicated all in Gloucestershire
are trying to persuade the Government to consider
some type of buffer arrangement for the financial year
2011/12 and come up with a far fairer system of
funding for 2012/13. It may be that I need to ask you
consider writing to your MPs about this matter as
none of us can be happy with the fact that our young
people are actually getting less of the national
resource for education than close neighbours who
have very similar geographic and economic indicators
to Gloucestershire. However I must stress that even if
we are reduced to £350,000 it will still be more
beneficial to us to be an academy and to be able to
protect the education we desire than if we remained
with the local authority. Yes, we will have to buy
services that previously were provided but as an
outstanding school what we have received from the
local authority over the years has been minimal and
there is a very strong case to say schools such as St
Peter’s have been subsidising general education in the
county for a number of years. That is not necessarily
bad but this is a fact of life and I would much prefer to
have the money so that we can assist other schools,
particularly our Roman Catholic feeder Primary
Schools in a way that enables them to maximise their
resources for the benefit of their young people.
If I need your help with writing to MPs I will outline
separately the areas where I think you might like to
comment.