Oppose Pershore High School's Proposal to take in Year 7 pupils in 2016

Pershore High School’s proposal to take in year 7 pupils from September 2016 will not only affect year 7 pupils and the organisation of the high school (including its other pupils), but it will also have an impact (in some cases a very major one) on all of the children from schools that feed into it, since it will force a complete restructuring of the whole system.

The signatories below are concerned about any or all of the following and urge the Governors of Pershore High School to consider their impact before deciding upon the future of our local education system.

• The proposed changes are not part of an overall strategic plan for our area, considering demographics, properly researched parent views, funding issues, staffing expertise and analysing what the best options are for our children

• Schools are having to work out, individually, how to move forward, rather than collectively

• Any resulting restructuring is not being endorsed, managed, nor financed by our local authority

• The timescale suggested for change is unrealistic

• The experience of all other areas restructuring from three- to two-tier is of major disruption to children’s education over several years (and in all of those areas millions has been injected by their local authority)

• Danger is that good and excellent teachers will be lost in the restructuring – and it is good teaching that is at the very core of our children’s success, not structures and processes

• Danger that parents will be put off sending their children to schools in the pyramid with such uncertainty over the future. It is certainly not helping Pershore High School’s reputation with prospective parents as it has raised awareness of concerns about issues there that could be detrimental to the welfare of the children, thereby undermining confidence in the school

• School management is being distracted by this process at a time when a more onerous GCSE national curriculum is being introduced

• Our current system is working well, but everything can always be improved, so shouldn’t we be concentrating on how to do that?