Published Date: 10 January 2006

Location: Yorkshire

New academy suspends one in ten pupils

Trinity Academy at Thorne, near Doncaster:


Shocked parents to launch campaign against school's disciplinary policies after children sent home
Paul Whitehouse

ALMOST one in 10 pupils have been suspended from a new educational academy in the first term since it took over from a conventional state secondary school.
One pupil has been permanently excluded from the £22m academy, another teenager is the subject of an appeal but could also end up excluded and a girl was sent home in a row over the uniform.
Some parents say they have been shocked by the severity of the discipline regime at the Trinity Academy, near Doncaster, which has replaced Thorne Grammar.
It is semi-independent and funded by the Vardy Foundation, which finances a similar academy in Middlesbrough that has also attracted controversy.
Dissatisfied parents have formed the Thorne and Moorends Parents and Students Support Group and have organised a public meeting in a pub at Moorends tomorrow evening to try to launch a campaign against the academy's policies.
Organiser Pauline Wood said the idea snowballed out of a conversation between unhappy parents.
Now they are trying to enlist the support of parents of children at feeder schools in the area and want the issue to be raised nationally.

"We need to let people know nationally so that others don't end up in the position which we are in now," she said.

"Maybe, if we get enough people together and enough support we can stop things from getting any worse. We believe we have already stopped some children from being excluded, because of our presence."
Members of the National Union of Teachers are among those expected to attend the meeting.
The boy appealing against exclusion was ejected from the school for smoking, Ms Wood claimed, but had not been caught on school premises. Instead, he was reported by another pupil and then interviewed by a teacher and, although he originally denied guilt, he eventually admitted it.
"He was told he would be treated more leniently if he admitted it, so he did so and they excluded him. A lot of kids smoke and, although it is wrong, it is not the worst thing they could do," she claimed.

Academy staff had suggested to some parents that they voluntarily withdraw their children, she claimed, but the group was advising parents against that because it left them legally responsible for their child's education.
"If parents choose to take their children out it looks better for the academy because it does not go down on the figures as an exclusion," she said.
Ms Wood's own daughter, Catherine Hodgeson, 15, spent two days out of school as the result of a row over school uniform, which is provided by one specific outfitter in Doncaster.
Trousers supplied to Catherine were from a different supplier because she takes a larger size than many pupils and they have a different appearance.
Because of that, she was accused of wearing non-uniform trousers and was sent home, resuming her studies only two days later after the business confirmed to the academy that her trousers were an official item that it had supplied.

"It seems to us that they are just trying to break the spirit of the children who attend the academy. They are not allowed to question anything," she said.
But the Vardy Foundation, which operates the academy, is unapologetic, insisting that suspension and exclusion rates are no worse, and in some cases better, than the rates recorded at the old grammar school. Many of the suspensions were for shorter periods than expected under the grammar school regime and wereconcluded by a meeting which a parent was expected to attend.
A spokeswoman said: "The academies are set up to make a difference and raise standards. We have made no secret of the fact that when we were chosen as sponsors we would have very high expectations of behaviour and attendance."
The only confirmed permanent exclusion so far was of a girl who had been found carrying a knife.
Trinity Academy is not the first Vardy Foundation-backed school to face criticism. The exclusion rate at the similar establishment in Middlesbrough was 10 times ahead of neighbouring schools when it first opened.
The spokeswoman said that situation was a blip caused by the changeover and it had now settled down.
Parents in the protest group had not approached the academy principal and had declined an offer of a meeting, she added. "These seem to be parents of children who have fallen foul of the rules."