Hartsdown Academy has featured in national and local media after it placed the following job advertisement
Excerpt from Original Hartsdown Job Advert in the Guardian (rapidly replaced but still on the Internet)
What does our Science Department need? Hartsdown Academy needs a Department Head to rebuild its Science Department. Results are well below expectations and teaching has been poor. As a result, the attitude of students towards the subject has diminished, resulting in disappointing behaviour for learning. The Department effectively requires special measures. |
The advert continues with such selling points as: ‘Margate is on the margins of English society, both culturally and economically – as well as geographically’. As one of Kent’s three ‘Tough Love Academies’, it is difficult to match ‘Hartsdown is a beautifully inclusive school and I am immensely proud of the care the school takes over every single child’ from the advert, with the robust disciplinary action on minor infringements that has attracted bad publicity ever since the headteacher was appointed. This has made the school so unpopular with families, leading to the second lowest proportion of first preferences for admission at any school in the county, and the highest number of children abandoning the school for Elective Home Education.
One wonders how the headteacher would describe the remainder of the school’s teaching, which provides by some way the lowest examination performance in Kent across the board. Is science really so much worse than the other subjects? Perhaps instead of condemning his teachers as indeed he has publicly condemned many pupils and their families coming from possibly the most deprived District in Kent, he should reflect and try a different approach.
My previous article on ‘Tough Love Academies’ sets out some of the background and there is no doubt that teaching at Hartsdown is a challenge, for the original job advert does not mince its words:
‘I am immensely proud of the care the school takes over every single child – many of whom come from extremely challenging backgrounds. 27% of our students are EAL, with 10% Roma. Margate has become a bridge head for eastern European immigration and Hartsdown has specialised in integrating unaccompanied asylum seeking minors. 57% of our students are disadvantaged / pupil premium – the school serves two of the most deprived wards in the UK, Margate Central and Cliftonville West’. I am not convinced it decided to 'specialise', for many of these are children who are placed here by KCC here, as there was no other school with vacancies.
You will find the full advert here or, if it is still online here, painting a very ‘challenging’ picture of the school and District. Unsurprisingly, and possibly when the Coastal Academy Trust CEO saw it, the advert was replaced with a much more positive picture of school and of Thanet that might attract candidates who could have missed the national and local media controversy this generated.
It is no surprise that 85 of the children offered places at the school this month are Local Authority Allocations – children who never applied for the school, but there was nowhere else to send them. This is by some way the largest figure for any school in Kent and perhaps owes something to previous controversies which will have affected the reputation of this unhappy school.
After the adverse media publicity the advertisement was pulled, to be replaced by:
What does our Science Department need? The Department effectively requires a committed, ambitious and talented senior leader, with the freedom to innovate and take some risks where necessary - but with a mandate to place science back at the heart of school life, where it deserves to be. |
You will find the full replacement advert here or online here, presenting a much more positive view of the post but sadly, probably too late – the damage has been done.
Everyone at Hartsdown is committed to excellence in everything we do. Particularly:
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To have a perfect uniform as the third major target in his vision is certainly unusual and, like the rest of the Welcome, appears to be about the Headmaster and his ideals, rather than the school. By contrast, the Home and Welcome Pages of the other two very successful Coastal Academies: King Ethelbert and Dane Court are all about the students and the school with the headteacher rightly taking a much lower profile.
It is clear that as the school of last choice for families in Thanet, Hartsdown needs to change its approach and somehow needs to build a positive reputation. ‘Tough Love’ and denigration of teachers, the humiliation of pupils and the alienation of parents is not to the way to do it. Something needs to give!