PERFORMANCE OF KINGS SCIENCE ACADEMY

That this House is very concerned that another Ofsted report on Kings Science Academy (KSA), Bradford has concluded that senior leaders and governors at the school are still not taking effective action on crucial areas requiring improvement; notes the report says that the school has not recruited sufficient high-quality, experienced teachers to deliver the curriculum, and of 29 new teachers joining the staff 19 were either newly-qualified or trainees; further notes that KSA has not developed procedures for dealing with teaching which is not good enough and that the academy has not developed an approach in which students are fully comfortable to acknowledge when they need help and ask for it; recalls that this school was both visited and lauded by the Secretary of State for Education and the Prime Minister as being an exemplar of the new free schools policy; believes that on the contrary, the KSA fiasco demonstrates the failure of Government policy; and concludes that past and present trustees and governors have signally failed pupils and parents and are not fit for purpose and that the school should be removed from the control of the Trust that set it up.