Pupils at Eden Boys' School in Birmingham make the second-best progress in the country, according to a key UK government measure
ago, on a rainy October evening, Asiyah Ravat staked out the father of a pupil who had gone off the rails. He was not at home when she visited. “So I just said, ‘We’re not going anywhere, we’re in the car,” recalls Mrs Ravat, the head at Eden Boys’ School, an Islamic state secondary in the suburbs of Birmingham. The meeting helped, and there was no more trouble.
Non-white children also tend to do better in progress measures, notes Jon Andrews of the Education Policy Institute, a think-tank, making Star Academies’ next move intriguing. Last year the organisation changed its name to reflect the fact that it has taken on nine non-religious, underperforming schools in parts of the country including Blackpool and Morecombe, both run-down coastal towns.
Despite Star’s academic record, there was opposition to the takeover from parents in Blackpool, who started a petition objecting to it because of the organisation’s Islamic roots. In 2014 an undercover documentary showed a teaching assistant at one of the group’s primary schools describing music and clapping as “satanic”. But an immediate follow-up investigation by Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, found no evidence of broader hardline views or extremism.
The trust’s mission is to tackle social disadvantage, “which goes beyond faith,” says Kieran Larkin, the director of education. In truth, the bigger challenge may be introducing the chain’s culture into existing establishments. All academies opened by Star are rated “outstanding” by Ofsted. The new ones were doing so badly that they have been taken from the previous leadership.
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