Why an Academy? Academies are supposed to replace failing schools, but Sutton Centre isn failing, so why change?
Sutton Centre Community College was judged Good overall in its last Ofsted inspection and this summer’s results were particularly good. On one measure (‘contextualised value added’) the school was placed 2nd overall in a league table of all Nottinghamshire secondary schools. The staff have worked very hard to achieve this success. The proportion of students leaving with 5 or more GCSE grades A*-C or equivalent (including English and Maths) has risen at the Community College by almost 10% this year, reaching 36% for the first time. By comparison, the average figure for Nottinghamshire is 46% and for England and Wales 50%. If results at the school are to continue to improve very rapidly to become comparable with the national average, this cannot come from asking the staff to work even harder. It needs a concerted and focused range of initiatives and, particularly, greater freedom to do things differently. We believe that introducing the academies model will enable the school to jump to t
