OUTWOOD Academy Carlton is celebrating its climb up the school league tables, going from worst to best in three years.
Under its previous guise of Carlton Community College, the school was languishing as one of the worst schools in South Yorkshire three years ago, graded by Ofsted as ‘inadequate’ and bottom of the Barnsley league table for GCSE results.
That was when Outwood Grange Academies Trust began working with the Royston Lane school, resulting in the conversion to Outwood Academy Carlton in February 2016.
Principal Paul Haynes said since that point results have rocketed with more pupils achieving a good grade in both English and maths and the proportion of students scoring the very top grades having more than quadrupled during the same period.
Mr Haynes said: “It has taken a long time to change people’s perception of Carlton and we are still sometimes thought of as the poor relation, and yet our results this summer show that we outperform every school in Barnsley, with only the grammar school performing at a similar level.”
But it is the academy’s progress figure that they are most proud of.
A progress 8 figure of 0.52 means that, on average, every child in year 11 at Outwood Academy Carlton, across all of their subjects, achieved just above half a grade better than their peers of a similar ability did nationally.
Mr Haynes said this places the academy in the top 12 per cent of schools nationally in the ‘well above average’ bracket. Indeed, this ranks Outwood Academy Carlton as not only the top school in Barnsley but eighth out of 125 schools across the whole of South Yorkshire.
Mr Haynes added: “Parents are clearly beginning to believe in the academy with the number of students starting in year seven this September reaching 220, meaning that the year group is full for the first time ever.
“I believe that local children should attend local schools and I hope the fact that our results were better than even Kettlethorpe’s results this year, will mean that parents in the local area will be confident that sending their children to Outwood Academy Carlton is the right choice.”
Mr Haynes said the final word should go to Brandon Green, the outgoing student president of the school, who left in the summer with a string of top grades.
Brandon, who is a member of the Youth Parliament and is due to speak in the House of Commons today, said: “What is not so obvious but ever-present is the change in our students’ mindset. Instead of feeling embarrassed to say that they attend this school, now students wear their uniform with pride and with a new sense of aspiration.
“Due to this school’s excellent teaching and support staff, students can dream big because they know that if they work hard, they can achieve whatever they want to achieve.”
LINKED STORY: Schools must try harder to close gap on rest of country
