On Friday I was delighted to be asked to visit Bournside School to meet with students from Years 9, 10 and 12. Their questions were incisive, challenging and covered a wide range of issues.
As I sit down to write this column, both Bournside and Rowanfield Junior School have just been awarded a grant from the Government’s Condition Improvement Fund. This is a dedicated national pot of nearly half a billion, created to help refurbish and repair school buildings.
The grants will ensure that pupils can learn in safe and energy efficient classrooms.
The funding is in addition to the extra £2.3 million already awarded directly to Cheltenham schools earlier this month.
I’m so pleased to see this extra investment in Cheltenham’s future.
Before I was elected, Cheltenham’s schools had some of the lowest per pupil funding in the country. After fighting a long campaign, that national funding formula has been changed, bringing our primary and secondary schools more in line with their London counterparts.
I recognise that there is still some way to go. But it is already producing major dividends.
Last week an International Literacy Study was published, assessing the reading ability of nine and ten-year-olds. England came fourth out of 43 countries.
That is a huge tribute to the work of our school staff, governors, pupils and of course parents and carers.
Much of it has been credited to putting phonics at the heart of teaching children to read. The Government introduced the phonics screening check to ensure that every six-year-old was on track with their reading. In that first year 58 per cent of pupils correctly read at least 32 of the 40 simple words in the test. By 2019, just before the pandemic, that had risen to 82 per cent.
Getting the teaching of reading right matters. Along with numeracy, reading is the foundation of a child’s education. If you don’t learn to read, you can’t read to learn. Our ambition is to ensure that every child can read fluently. Only then can we be confident they can truly fulfil their potential.
[Column published in the Glos Echo]