Academy chain’s poor grade from Ofsted

OLDHAM ACADEMY NORTH: parent organisation under fire

THE academy chain operating Oldham Academy North has come under fire from the education watchdog.

Ofsted has found half of E-ACT’s 23 schools don’t provide a good standard of education. They include Oldham Academy North, downgraded from good to “requires improvement” following an inspection in May 2014.

Inspectors say that despite taking “a more robust and direct approach to school improvement”, standards for too many pupils in E-ACT academies aren’t good enough. They have serious concerns that pupils from poor backgrounds aren’t doing well enough. They also call for urgent action to end the disparity of pupils doing better in E-ACT primaries than secondaries.

Last year E-ACT was stripped of 10 schools amid concerns over standards.

Oldham Academy North replaced Grange School in 2010 before moving into a new £16.8 million building in Broadway in 2013. It is one of three academies, run by different sponsors, which controversially replaced five Oldham secondaries in 2010.

A spokesman for E-ACT said: “Over the past year we have overhauled the way E-ACT is run and the way our academies operate, so children and young people genuinely have an excellent education during their time with us. This is now beginning to bear fruit.”