School that cost millions set to shut after 3 years
A SECONDARY school which cost taxpayers millions to set up is facing closure three years after it opened, the M.E.N. can reveal.
Manchester Creative Studio (MCS) has only been open since September 2014. But a catalogue of failures – including a scathing Ofsted report, plummeting pupil numbers, rock-bottom GCSE results and questions over its finances – mean the government want to shut it down.
Its sister secondary, Collective Spirit in Oldham, closed over the summer in almost identical circumstances. Both schools were set up under the government’s ‘free schools’ initiative which allowed private individuals and organisations to set up state-funded schools free of council control.
An M.E.N. investigation revealed in January how both secondaries were being taken off their founder and chief executive, former charity boss Raja Miah, after a string of controversies. Collective Spirit was placed in special measures and handed to new management before ultimately being closed in the summer.
MCS was also put in special measures and placed under new management, but initially kept open. Now the government is proposing to close that school too, arguing it is ‘unviable.’ Manchester’s MP has welcomed the move and blasted MCS as a ‘failed experiment.’
The Ancoats school opened in September 2014, offering – according to its accounts – a ‘rigorous academic programme’ for 14-19-yearolds. But since then it has performed dismally, despite receiving more than £5m in government funds. In the 2015 academic year, 38 per cent of pupils were persistently absent – three times the national average. The following summer the school’s first exam results placed pupil progress in English and maths in the bottom 1pc nationally.
At around the same time it was handed a financial notice to improve and ordered to balance its books, including repaying money it owed the government in overpaid grants.
In March this year, Ofsted delivered a damning verdict in its first inspection, ranking the school inadequate in every area and slamming ‘far-reaching failures.’
Parents, pupils and staff had all raised concerns with inspectors, it said, that children were not safe at school. The report pointed to ‘serious and widespread failures in safeguarding,’ also criticising poor teaching, lesson planning, curriculum and governance, while highlighting bad behaviour and high levels of truancy. This summer there were just 40 pupils on its books, half that of the previous year.
Now the north-west regional schools commissioner Vicky Beer has written to all those involved with the school asking for their views on its proposed closure.
In a letter seen by the M.E.N. she says that in order for the school to survive, it would need to be placed with a new trust that could reverse its falling pupil numbers to make it financially viable.
“The difficulties in securing the necessary viability would be a challenging task for any trust in the school’s current circumstances,” she wrote. “We have therefore decided to consider the possibility of closure of the school, subject to conducting a ‘listening period’ to gather views on the proposed closure.”
Manchester Central MP Lucy Powell – a member of the Commons education select committee – said she supported closure, which she added had been a ‘long time coming.’
“It has been clear the school was not being well run and wasn’t viable for a long time,” she said.
“The question now should be as to how this got the go-ahead in the first place – and how much public money has been wasted on this failed experiment. My immediate thoughts are also with the pupils who have been left high and dry. But I will be asking these questions of ministers and of the schools commission over the coming weeks.”