SCHOOL DECISION A-MAZING SUCCESS
WHEN he bought a school with no students in 2018, Cardiff property developer Sajid Ghaffar admits it was a leap of faith. Three years on Cardiff Academy has 60 A-level students and top exam results. Last year 26 students took A-levels with 96% of results grades A* to A – which Sajid says puts it in first place for Wales and second in the UK.
The businessman, who grew up in the city and studied law at Cardiff University, is interested in education and with four children of his own said he knows how important it is.
His own children are too young to attend Cardiff Academy, but when they are they’ll have to take the entrance exam like anyone else, he says.
Within a month of buying the sixth form school (it only takes students post-GCSE) in August 2018 he had recruited 20 students. The school has grown steadily since and next week 26 of the 60 sixth form students will get their A-level results and the rest AS.
Alongside them there are also 70 international students doing foundation year studies to apply to university and 20 international pre-Masters students.
The school prides itself on helping students get good grades and charges hefty fees to help them do that. Classes have an average 10 pupils and sometimes just two. Local sixth form students pay £13,000 a year while international students pay £15,000 for the privilege.
But Sajid also wants to help teenagers from less well off backgrounds. Full scholarships are offered to those who excel at GCSEs and pass a test to get in. This year 13 AS and A level students are teenagers on scholarships.
Cardiff Academy goes into maintained schools without sixth forms to encourage the brightest children to apply for some of the £250,000 scholarship pot. He denies he is creaming off the best brains, pointing out the schools they go to don’t have sixth forms.
Sajid, who went to private school himself (the now closed New College in Cardiff ), knows how it can help not just academic students, but also those who find large schools stressful, to have smaller classes.
“We have a holistic approach. Each student is an individual with different needs and abilities.
“We are not a special educational needs school but have had students with learning difficulties. We have to fund the college but earning money is not the be all and end all. It’s also what we can put back with scholarships.
“I come from Cardiff and wanted to put something back. The majority of the scholarship students are from the Valleys. We offer the chance to come to a private school for A-levels.
“We go to schools without sixth forms in some deprived areas and target the able and talented. The schools offer us a room and pick students to come and hear about us.”
One student who came on a scholarship had never been out of the Valleys and never visited Cardiff before applying. He got good GCSEs at Cyfartha High in Merthyr earning him a scholarship, achieved four A*s at Cardiff Academy and is now studying maths at Exeter University.
The school’s owner said the scholarships are offering those that want it the chance to study in a very academic environment in small classes.
“We don’t actively recruit from schools that have a sixth form,” operations director Sajid Hussain adds.
The school requires six A* passes at GCSE for scholarships and six A*s at GCSE for fee paying students, plus an entrance exam. Recruiting those top academic achievers pays off in its results.
Two of last year’s students got into Oxbridge, one to read law at Oxford and the other maths at Cambridge. All the rest got offers from Russell Group universities.
Principal Caroline Williams, a former head of chemistry at Aberdare Community School, came to Cardiff Academy as a chemistry teacher in 2018.
“This could not be further away from Aberdare, which I also loved working in, but it is different,” she said.
“Some of our students would not have done well if they had not got scholarships to come here. There is excellent teaching in mainstream schools but not all teaching is always excellent.”
She believes exams prepare students for life and the school teaches them to pass exams. During Covid all lessons were live streamed and like all schools this year’s results will again be based on teacher assessment in a process agreed by the Welsh Government, exam regulator Qualifications Wales and exam board the WJEC.
Luke Thomas, from Neath, got a scholarship this year after achieving 10A*s and an A at GCSE at Dwr-yFelin Comprehensive last summer.
The 17-year-old heard about the opportunity from a friend and applied. His mother, a probation officer, and father, who works in security, supported his choice.
“My school had no sixth form and I want to study medicine. My friends have gone to Neath College but I wanted to come here. My friends and family have been really supportive of me coming here.
“Dwr-y-Felin Comprehensive was nice but there were 200 in my year while here there are 35. I do study hard and want to study medicine at Cambridge.”
Talyn Griffiths, 19, also went to a school with no sixth form, Cyfartha High in Merthyr Tydfil. Taking Alevels on a scholarship at Cardiff Academy in 2019 he got A*s for maths, further maths and physics and after taking a gap year is off to Bath University to study maths in September.
“I had applied to go to Merthyr College but when I got GCSE grades to get to Cardiff Academy I thought it was too good an opportunity to miss,” he said.
“I don’t think I would have done as well as I did if I hadn’t gone there. The classes were small, there were only two in my further maths class.”
Alaa Cattaeh, 19, a first year medical student at Cardiff, is the first in her family to go to university. After GCSEs at St Teilo’s High she got a scholarship to Cardiff Academy which she credits with getting her into medical school.