D-DAY FOR £125M HOLIDAY VILLAGE AND FOOTBALL STADIUM Tough on terror £660k security cordon around city centre to protect busy streets

Www.kentonline.co.uk/canterbury FULL STORY SEE PAGE 3 CONTENTIOUS DEVELOPMENT NOT BACKED BY COUNCIL More than 100 anti-terror bollards will be installed at 18 locations across the city centre to protect the streets from terrorists. kmfm 106fm EXCLUSIVE Th

£660,000 security operation.

The bollards will help prevent vehicles being used as hostile weapons on the city’s pedestrian-filled streets.

A further £140,000 will be spent on anti-terror safeguards at the Marlowe Theatre.

Education expert and former headteacher Peter Read says the explanation for Canterbury’s results lies mainly with one simple factor.

“We have a selective system in Kent,” he said. “Grammar schools will tend to take the highend pupils and the bottom go to non-selective schools, which tend not to perform as well.

“I believe the balance of calculation should be shifted to make it more equitable between selective and non-selective schools. I think [Progress 8] gives an unfair distribution which favours selective schools and schools in nice areas.”

Mr Read says that the problem is exacerbated in Canterbury because of the area’s high proportion of successful grammar school appeals.

“As a result, many of the Canterbury schools lose children who in other areas would be in non-selective schools, and would be their highest performing children.”

Meanwhile, former Canterbury Academy head Phil Karnavas has gone as far as describing Progress 8 scoring as “flawed” and “dangerous”.

“It is not, and will never be, the case that every student should take the prescribed 8 qualifications in required combination,” he said.

“Attainment in KS2 maths & English cannot sensibly be used to measure achievement across 8 subjects in KS4.

“P8 disadvantages schools in challenging circumstances. Its ‘rigged’ scoring system favours the academically able.

“P8 narrowly and imperfectly measures only one, albeit important, aspect of a school’s contribution to student development: academic achievement. This leads to simplistic league tables.

“Schools with no real curriculum philosophy have removed or reduced the imaginative, creative, aesthetic, artistic and practical subjects because they don’t offer the points. Schools with no real educational commitment to inclusion have removed vulnerable learners because they will not get the points.”