New College Leicester: The City's Best Kept Secret

By Sue Billington

This book is the story about the best-kept secret in Leicester: New College, a secondary school and sixth form college located in west Leicester. The past still haunts the reputation of New College, which was labelled the worst school in the country in 2005._x000D_
Today New College is an exceptional educational establishment where its values are integral to everything on offer for students and staff. From once having failed to provide a good education to a whole generation of children, this book evidences the existence of a fantastic community asset for the education and betterment of New College students and their community, present and future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brown Dog Books
• Release date: May 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839521416

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INTRODUCTION

This book is about the best-kept secret in the city of Leicester. It is about a state-funded secondary school with above national average attendance figures. It is about a school where students love to be and to learn, where respect is a core value. It is about a school where teachers and staff want to belong, where they take personal responsibility for their performance and development. This amazing school has a waiting list of children who want to be taught here; yet there is no selection test for admittance as the standard local authority admittance criteria apply. There are no tests to select students based on academic ability, because every child is important at this school. It is a school with world-class sporting facilities for the everyday use of the students; facilities that are made available every evening and weekend for the community to use. It is a school where a school parliament, with representatives from every year group, every faculty and every specialism, have formed a group that represents the cohort with an aim to work alongside staff to continually improve the school. It is a school with amazing children who are confident, articulate and engaged, and who take responsibility for their actions; in fact, they are every employer’s dream. It is a school that in 2005 was named and shamed in the national press as being the worst school in the country. The school is New College Leicester and this book explores and records the incredible transformational journey that took a failing state secondary school from being the worst in the country to become a Centre of Excellence for Inclusion and rated Good by Ofsted. By studying past Ofsted inspection reports, Local Education Authority records and school statistics, and through the recording of oral histories from staff past and present, the book evidences the halting of failure, the reversal of fortune, and the sheer determination of leaders to turn New College Leicester around with the objective of giving something good back to the community it had previously failed.

We have to look back to 1997 when New Labour came into power with a promise to improve the nation’s education to see that the optimism of this promise was certainly not to be realised by the New Parks community. Whilst government strategies to turn around failing schools were applied across the country, not one of these strategies would be able to halt the declining educational standards of the then named New Parks Community College. In 1999, in a bid to force a change of destiny, three local schools were combined into one Fresh Start school to form New College Leicester. These three comprehensive schools – New Parks Community College, Wycliffe School and Alderman Newton’s School – were amalgamated on a 12-hectare site, working across three previously separate schools in their individual buildings to serve a cohort of 1700 students. This extraordinary number of students was fused together despite warnings from parents, teachers’ unions and the local authority that this would not turn out well. Serving the community of New Parks, a council estate with significant levels of unemployment and social deprivation, New College Leicester was created as a ‘Super School’ and was set to fail a whole generation of students, along with ruining the lives and careers of several teachers. The Labour-controlled Leicester City Council was powerless to stop the central government directive. The Local Education Authority was itself under government scrutiny for failing educational targets across the city. The decline in the ability of New College to deliver good education was not an overnight phenomenon. The three schools that were amalgamated were offering education that was described as ‘okay but not great’ by staff who worked there at the time of the merger. The initial outlook for New College was promising. Senior posts across the three schools were rationalised down to single posts, and Heads of Faculty and senior staff from the three amalgamated schools had to reapply for their jobs to become part of the New College team. Whilst the staff who were unsuccessful at appointment were disgruntled, the successful staff joined the New College team with positive aspirations for its future. It was to be a catalogue of successive failures in managing the transformation that led to the sharp decline of New College. In addition to not addressing the physical challenges of operating across three separate buildings, there was an inability to grasp the challenges of managing the amalgamation of three separate cultures while at the same time delivering a good education. This downward spiral of mismanagement impacted sharply on the GCSE results. With the disparate, cobbled-together physical layout allowing students to wander off site during their long treks between classes, managing their behaviour was out of control. The national and local press were having a field day, branding New College Leicester as the ‘worst school in the country’. The press followed the demise of the school over the next five years, helping to secure a ruinous reputation that has taken decades to try to reverse. The stigma of ‘old’ New College Leicester still lives on in the minds of some Leicester people, despite the New College of today being a Centre of Excellence for Inclusion and meeting national standards for attainment and having above national average attendance.

Today, the passion to continue to improve is even stronger. The ethos that every single child is important, supported and expected to meet their full potential, is embedded in the values that underpin the whole establishment. The vision that was set out over a decade ago remains the goal that continues to be executed. The implementation of the vision is incrementally strengthening community cohesion through the provision of excellent state-of-the-art sports and drama facilities that are open for community use. This book captures the journey of a remarkable culture change that is focused on improving outcomes for every single student on roll. The passion and determination of a consistent team of leaders, staff and governors, and the preparedness of students to rise to a challenge, are the threads that run through this story of success. Share this journey with us in the hope that schools in similar challenging situations may gain some insight, inspiration and ideas that may help to control their own futures.

CHAPTER ONE

Baseline 1999 to 2005

New College was formed two and a half years ago from the amalgamation of three schools which were in considerable difficulties. Two of these schools were in need of special measures and the third was deemed to have serious weaknesses. The arrangements leading to the formation of new college did not have the full support of the local community…The percentage of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals, (29.2 per cent), is above the national average of 15.3 per cent. (Source: Ofsted Inspection 11–15 March 2002)

The creation of New College Leicester in 1999 was hailed as the solution to prevent three failing comprehensive schools in the west of the city of Leicester from failing further. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of educational funding were to be invested into New College to support the restructure initiative. Education was at the time reported to be failing across Leicester. New College served as the main local authority-maintained secondary school in the New Parks area and as it had a small sixth form capability attached to it, it also served as a college. An Ofsted inspection was carried out in 1999 on Leicester City Council Local Education Authority that highlighted several weaknesses, including underspending on education across the city. A follow-up inspection in May 2001 found that whilst weaknesses were being addressed by the Local Education Authority, there had been little change in the socio-economic context since the first inspection in 1999. It was reported that Leicester continues to serve a culturally diverse population with relatively high levels of disadvantage. (Source: Ofsted short Inspection May 2001)

To establish a starting point for this chapter, a series of interviews