So where are all the nay-sayers now?

HGHS became an Academy on 1st March 2012.
•     No teachers lost their jobs.
•     No support staff lost their jobs.
•     No staff objected sufficiently to resign.
•     Budgets went up.

•     All students have continued to commit and thrive.
•     All staff jobs are secure.
•     The school is free from LA meddling and closure for 125years.
•     A sixth-form is on the horizon.

Not only are all of the above truths incontestable, but the year on year results go from strength to strength. Each student is encouraged to perform to their individual very best. A proven fact recognised recently by a national award placing HGHS in the top 10% of school nationally.

All of this is testament to the sound and well grounded decision to convert the school to an Academy, allowing – amongst many other things, the school to fund additional support for its students and thus further driving up the standards of this excellent school and its students.

It is perhaps as well that the nay-sayers on this forum remain for the most part anonymous, for in a very short number of years to come it is likely that you may have to fight to get your child into this school!

So where are all the nay-sayers now?

I would suggest that 4 months is a little early to claim success and the fact that a number of schools that adopted the academy status this time last year are already reporting cuts in budgets that mean they won't be able to complete work started and have shoftfalls in their annual budgets. This was reported by all the news networks in recent months.

They are being forced to look at outside funding, ie the privatisation of the education system by stealth. I maintain that this is the overall plan and now that is coming to pass.

I challenge you to come to this forum every six months from now to prove me wrong, to come on four months into a project is at best a little naive and at worst damn right patronising

Excuse typos, i wrote the last two responses with fire coming out of my feckin ears!!!!!!

I would also add, TwistedBanana on your point about privatisation by stealth - just a couple of things that you may like to respond to:

1) This is a state-run academy. How is it privatisation by stealth? There is nothing about being free from a local authority's control that makes a school automatically privatised.

2) What's wrong with a private company running a school if the level of service is maintained or improved and is still free at the point of use?

What i mean Oliver is this:

As certain schools will have access to funding outside of their state funding they will utilise that facility. This will enhance that school and make it more desirable to potential students, sounds ok so far?

Ok, heres my issue, depending on location of the school funding will be less easy to come by, this school will lag behind and will be punished for poor results etc as the well funded school cherry picks the best students, hmm, starting to sound a little more worrying now.

Eventually the schools with access to solid private funding will thrive (you never know HGHS could be one of these), the best teachers will want to work in the best schools for the best pay and best working environment, the others will fall into oblivion.

To me this is starting to sound like a national disaster. It will destroy areas completely and create a huge educational divide that will take us back to the turn of the 20th century.

You may think i am exaggerating this point, you may think that if a lot of schools become self-funding then there is more in the education budget to help the poorer schools - i for one do not believe this will be the case, that money will be directed elesewhere. Many childrens educational right will be lost, a lost generation of children, 100 times worse than what we have now.

I could labour on more about what i think the overall affect will be but i think you get my jist.

I was however extremely angry with Big Teds claim of success after 4 months, i am still spitting