Upturn in results ‘vindicates’ £1bn spending on town schools

FIFTEEN YEARS ago Barnsley Council launched the most expensive school building programme in western Europe – an attempt to turn around historically poor results – and faced accusations of simply “putting old wine in new bottles”.

But with exam performance which has accelerated to outstrip national averages, the “brave” decision to spend around £1bn on a network of new secondary schools to replace their crumbling predecessors has been vindicated.

The transformation has been all the more dramatic because it has happened in the face of Government spending formulas for schools which, until changes were introduced recently, have disadvantaged Barnsley.

Latest figures show in the last year a five per cent growth – from 59 per cent to 64 – in numbers of children at the end of primary education who achieve expected levels in reading, writing and maths, putting the town in line with national performance.

However, younger children are making faster progress in the town’s primary schools than the national picture and more school leavers are now ahead of the national pack for getting GCSE grade four in the two English subjects and maths, at 61 per cent compared to the national figure of 59 per cent.

The results are attributed to more than a change in bricks and mortar, however. While the ‘Schools for the Future’ programme saw nine new ‘advanced learning centres’ created to replace the town’s previous 14 secondaries, it also represented a change in attitude and the opportunity to attract staff with the ambition to drive performance upwards.

Coun Tim Cheetham, the council’s cabinet member with responsibility for education, said: “It really is the fruition of a long term approach, about reinventing education.

“We saw it as a really ambitious scheme. Fifteen years down the line, on the back of what were pretty brave decisions at the time, here we are.

“It was a massive, change. It is not just bricks and mortar.

“That is clearly important, but it was about making it a nicer place to work.

“It was very bottom-up and making it look like a place that was ambitious.

“There were accusations of putting old wine in new bottles but it was more than just a building programme.”

The scale of the task should not be under-estimated, with the £1bn cost outstripping any other schools project anywhere in western Europe, with at least half as much again spent on improving primary schools.

Since the modernisation programme was put together, the complexion of education has also changed with the increasing switch towards academies and other alternatives to state-funded schools, a policy driven by the current Conservative and previous coalition governments.

In many areas that has seen local authorities largely divorced from involvement in education, a situation which Barnsley has successful rejected.

The council’s service director for education, Margaret Libreri, said: “We have a relationship with our schools which is the envy of other authorities.”

Coun Cheetham added: “We are not in pursuit of mediocrity, we want to be as good as we possibly can be.”

It’s the fruition of a long term approach, about reinventing education. Coun Tim Cheetham, Barnsley Council’s cabinet member for education