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Northern Education Trust’s response on Stockton Council’s concerns over ‘unprecedented’ levels of exclusion

In last week’s Weekly Update newsletter (dated 6th July 2018), SCHOOLS NorthEast published an article titled ‘Stockton Borough Council Committee raises concerns over “unprecedented” levels of exclusion’.

The CEO of a multi-academy trust named in this council report says the document doesn’t accurately reflect what is happening in one of its academies on a day-to-day basis.

Northern Education Trust have released a statement to SCHOOLS NorthEast in response to Stockton Borough Council’s findings.

Response from Rob Tarn, chief executive of Northern Education Trust, to Stockton Borough Council’s Final Report on fixed term exclusions

We are extremely disappointed with the final report and feel that it is not indicative of what is happening in the academy on a day to day basis nor reflective of what councillors saw when visiting the school. The culture at North Shore has been completely transformed.

Words such as ‘draconian’ are unhelpful, not representative of the real culture of the school and question the professionalism and unswerving commitment of staff who care deeply for our children, particularly the most vulnerable.

We will not apologise for having high expectations of student behaviour. We introduced a new behaviour policy in September and this undeniably led to a rise in fixed-term exclusions. However, the rate of fixed term-exclusion has reduced by over 350% from the first eight weeks of the year in comparison to the last eight school weeks. We note that this dramatic reduction is also not highlighted in the report.

The report rightly highlights that whilst fixed term exclusions were high this has not translated into high numbers of permanent exclusions. Moreover, across the Trust, we have only had one permanent exclusion from a total of 1,388 year 11 students.

In a recent student survey 93% of students at North Shore stated that behaviour was now better, 94% felt they now learn more in lessons and 95% of students stated that they now feel safer in school than they have previously.

Similarly, in an anonymous staff survey 98% of responses indicated that behaviour is now managed effectively, 98% believed students were respectful to staff and 98% reported feeling safe within the academy.

These are not just mere statistics.  The fact that students feel better about the academy is reflected in their day-to-day conduct – something that has been commented upon regularly by a number of key stakeholders when they have visited.

Around 200 Year 8 parents who attended the recent Year 8 Graduation were keen to tell staff how much the academy has improved this year.

Most importantly, forecasted outcomes for students this summer are set to be the best in the academy’s history, with those students who have been excluded predicted to do better than the whole of last year’s Year 11.

We will continue in our drive to improve outcomes for students in order to improve their life chances.

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