Blue Coat goes for academy status

BLUE Coat School has applied to become one the new wave of academies.

It could be the first to open in the borough after the coalition Government invited the country’s top performing schools to apply before the summer holidays.

If successful it would follow the 32 primary and secondary schools in England which will open as new-style academies this term.

A further 110 have also been given permission to convert in the next 12 months.

Academies are state-funded schools which receive their funding direct from the Government and are outside local authority control.

They were a flagship policy of the previous government to turn around underachieving schools by handing them over to sponsors.

More than 60 of these “traditional” academies will open this term including three in Oldham: Waterhead Academy, Oasis Academy Oldham and Oldham Academy North.

Education secretary Michael Gove announced a massive expansion when he invited all schools ranked as “outstanding” by Ofsted to become academies. He said: “Teachers and head teachers, not politicians and bureaucrats, should control schools and have more power over how they are run.

“That’s why we are spreading academy freedoms.

“This will give heads more power to tackle disruptive children, to protect and reward teachers better, and to give children the specialist teaching they need.”

Eight Oldham schools were among the 1,500 in England which expressed an interest in becoming academies.

But Christine Blower, head of the National Union of Teachers, said the low take-up showed that the idea had failed to catch the imagination of schools.