School chief - '˜I would like to see a lot more common sense from the Government to allow schools to get on with what they know is best for their students'

Education is also very different from qualifications, which are just a measure of how an individual is performing at a certain point in their life.

Education is what carries someone forward throughout their lives, which sets them up, and gives them a choice about which path to ultimately choose.

It is about allowing people to advance and to achieve - to not be restricted by a lack of knowledge, a lack of understand, a lack of qualifications.

So says Mark Cottingham (pictured), the recently-appointed principal at the ‘outstanding’-rated Shirebrook Academy.

His working life is about surprises, he says. It is about no day ever being the same - about dealing with the good and bad that crops up out of the blue.

This morning, he tells me, he has had a surprise visit from two Year 8 students who want to raise funds for a pupil in their year who is battling a serious illness - GOOD.

He has also had a few parents call after the Chad ran a story about the academy under-performing in the recently released Government league tables.

This has portrayed the school in a bad light and does not reflect the actual achievement of the kids.

The decision was taken to let some Year 10 students sit GCSEs a year early, Mark explains. so they could have a second or third try in Year 11 if necessary.

A lot of schools have stopped doing this, he says, but it was decided that it was the right thing to do for their students.

The problem, obviously, is that when the Department for Education publish the figures, they are not reflective of the actual situation - they merely show the results of students a year-or-so before they would normally be taking the exams.

“The biggest challenge for me is the competing accountabilities you have to balance,” he says. “So, I’m accountable to the local community, to the students and their parents, to make sure that I’m doing the right thing for them. I’m accountable to the staff, who expect me to do my best for them as well. I am accountable to the governors, who want the best for the school and the local community. I’m accountable to Ofsted. This school has been rated as outstanding and there is a pressure for us to remain outstanding. We are an academy, so I’m accountable to the regional schools’ commissioner, and I’m accountable to the Department for Education and Nicky Morgan. Then, I’m accountable to myself and fulfilling my own ideas of what I think education should be about.

“The biggest issue for me is how you balance all of these, because they inevitably conflict with each other.

“So, with the GCSE results, we entered a lot of our students in Year 10 because it’s beneficial for them - they get to have a go at an exams in Year 10, but can then resit if necessary the following year.

“It works for the students, but it’s not a good thing to do in terms of satisfying the Department for Education, because it makes you look awful in terms of the league tables.”

Shirebrook Academy’s final figures were around 48 per cent of students passing five or more GCSEs at A-c (including English and maths). But the published figures tell a more damning story and parents have been on the phone to share their disappointment.

Of all the competing demands that a headteacher faces, it is the students that must always come first, he says.

“Kid’s that come from economically deprived areas can be successful but the barriers that a lot of these young people face are considerable,” Mark says.

“I come from a council estate in Sheffield and I did alright, but clearly you have got a better chance of being successful if the environment you are brought up in doesn’t work against you. The peer group that young people are involved in is also an issue - if you are surrounded by a lot of high achievers then that inspires you to work hard.”

But the demands are huge, he says, and you have to decide what is most important, at a time when education policy is taking a massive about turn about once a year.

“The pace of change is such that I am trying to hold onto what I feel is important and filter the things that the Government are forcing me to do,” he says. “Each new Secretary of State says ‘there has been too much instability in education, and as soon as I have got it the way I want it there will be a period of stability’. The real problem is that the people making these decisions have no experience of working in education, and don’t realise how long it takes to implement changes.

“The new-style GCSEs come into effect from September and we still haven’t had the course specifications. We have a five-year plan which has to be totally rewritten each time the Secretary of State comes up with a new wheeze.

“At the moment there is a push back towards the grammar school curriculum of the 1950s, which would be disastrous in terms of arts and technology subjects. I will need to do everything I can to oppose this because it will be damaging to the education of many of my students.

“Finances also prove a real challenge as all the Government is doing is maintaining the level of funding at the same rate, so in real terms our funding is going to be cut by as much as 15 per cent over the next few years - so we will be trying to improve the quality of education on less money.”

The education sector is going through hard times, with teachers leaving the profession, fewer people applying to train as teachers and a drive away from practical and vocational courses, in favour of traditional academic subjects.

“I’m very lucky here because I work within a very supportive community,” Mark says. “There is a real myth that there are low aspirations amongst working class communities. In reality, young people from these communities may not necessarily know what they want to aspire to - but I have never met a parent yet who doesn’t want the best for their child, and I have never met a kid that doesn’t want to achieve the very best they can out of life. I also have a very dedicated and talented staff who go above and beyond to make it work for each individual child.”

But the principal, who joined Shirebrook Academy in September from Derby’s Da Vinci school, says there is a current problem with recruiting and retaining good teachers, particularly in core subjects.

“We have got a really good reputation and we are also a teacher training school, which gives us an advantage in terms of recruiting and retaining good teachers,” Mark says. “But there is a real problem of recruiting teachers.

“In my last school, if you were trying to recruit a maths or science teacher, you would be lucky if you got a full field of applicants for the position. Even here, we recently recruited a new member of staff and we had to advertise the position twice before it attracted a candidate strong enough to appoint, although I have to say that the person appointed is absolutely fantastic.

“It also doesn’t help that the public perception of schools is quite negative. I have been teaching for 25 years now and I believe that things are better now than they have ever been. My first school was in a former coalfields area, it was just after the Miners’ Strike and there was a massive issue with motivation. I was told there was no budget to photocopy anything, but I was pointed to a pile of text books dating back to the 1960s for me to use to help get the kids through their exams.

“We have also become much better as a profession at working with young people as individuals - it’s all about working with what they are good at and what will benefit them in the future.. The government will get panicked because we are falling down the international rankings, and start saying that we need to be more like China. But then the Chinese are sending their teachers over here because English pupils are better at problem solving and creative subjects - things that are genuinely sought by employers.

“In five years’ time, I would like to see a lot more common sense from the Government to allow schools to get on with what they know is best for their students. I would like there to be more opportunities for young people to pursue the courses that are right for them, not being forced to follow a more narrow route.

“I would like to see better and more joined-up thinking about teacher training and we should actually be celebrating just how good our schools actually are, and not denigrating them by comparing them to what schools in Shanghai are doing.

“But sadly, I think the reality is that we will be forced to offer a much narrower curriculum, which will lead to greater student dissatisfaction because they will be pursuing courses that are not particularly relevant to their needs. We will also have bigger class sizes due to problems with recruitment, which will lead to issues around behaviour and student progress.”