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Birkenhead High School to become Academy



AGREEMENT has been reached to turn Wirral’s last independent all-girls school into one of the Government’s flagship academies.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) has formally approved the arrangements for Birkenhead High School (BHS) to make the transition to independent academy status.

With the arrangements now approved, the school will move into the implementation phase, leading to the opening of the Academy in September.

As part of this, a Design User Group will be established to consider the improvements which will be made to BHS’s facilities "to fully deliver its educational vision". The initial allocation for this project is in the region of £11m.

Mrs Carole Evans, Headmistress and Principal Designate, said: "We are all delighted at this news.

"Our first year as an independent academy will be an exciting year for all involved, and we are looking forward to building on our traditional ethos and aspirational culture to remain a centre of excellence for many years to come."

Birkenhead High School Independent Academy will be a non-denominational, all-through (3-19) girls’ school, located at the current site of Birkenhead High School.

It will admit its first pupils in September 2009 to Nursery, Reception, Year 7 and Sixth Form, as part of a phased process.

The Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST) is one of the largest, longest established, and most successful groups of independent schools in the UK, with 4,000 staff and 20,000 students between the ages of three and 19.

As a charity that owns and runs a family of 29 schools in England and Wales, it reinvests all its income in its schools.

A GDST school, The Belvedere in Liverpool, was the very first independent school in the UK to join the government’s Academies programme, and it admitted its first cohort as an Academy in September 2007.

THE ECHO

Will this remain girls only?

That's bad news, the Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC) annual reports (these are the official ones commisioned by the Government) on Academies have consistently shown that Academies are NOT working and additionally they have a negative effect on surrounding schools as well.

This is now the fifth year the government has continued with a strategy that they know is not working.

Bailing out private schools is another side effect of the programme, Academies are private schools, why give a private school loads of taxpayers money to remain a private school?

I have been keeping an open mind on Academies but now the fifth report by PWC has continued to say they are not working, then I will jump of the fence and agree they are cr*p. Time for another programme, possibly asking people in the business instead of theorists in ivory towers may help. "People in the business" doesn't include ambitious yes men/women.


And YES, Birkenhead High School AKA Birkenhead High School Independent Academy will be all-girls.

Well if they can deliver the same or better education than a failing public school for less of our cash then why not?