9:00am Thursday 10th January 2008
NOVA Hreod School has vowed to pull its socks up after being ranked the second worst school for student improvement in the country.
The Moredon school has been ranked bottom of the Swindon LEA league table with just 29 per cent of its 240 GCSE pupils gaining five A* to C grades.
But the school is also second from bottom in the national education table highlighting the worst 100 schools that are ranked by their contextual value added score (CVA).
The CVA figure illustrates the educational improvement of children from when they begin secondary school to when they leave after their GCSEs. The school scored 936.1 compared to top achievers Churchfields School, which achieved 1,024, or Dorcan Technology College at 987.8.
But headteacher Andrew Fleet said the school had faced many challenges over the last year, including moving to a brand new state-of-the-art building.
The school also changed its name from Hreod Parkway when the old buildings either side of Akers Way closed and it merged onto one site in April.
Mr Fleet said: "Of course we are disappointed but there have been many challenges over the last 12 months. When we moved, that would have definitely affected our standing."
Mr Fleet said the bad overall performance of the school masked the excellent achievements of students who had gone beyond the national standard in subjects such as English.
He said: "The teaching environment has changed greatly since we re-launched and the children are showing an improvement in their abilities.
"Of course we plan to improve for next year but we mustn't forget about the individual outstanding performances we have seen in the last year."
The school has improved on the number of pupils achieving five grades A* to C at GCSE, including maths and English. This rose by one per cent.
But the average GCSE points total per pupil, which measures both GCSEs and other qualifications, has dropped by 54.4 points from 311.5 points to 257.1.
The school's truancy level has also increased, but the 0.9 per cent of half days lost to truanting rivals high-achieving Ridgeway School and is nowhere near the 2.30 per cent recorded at Churchfields School.
There were no GCSE results recorded for Headlands School as it closed at the end of the summer term and reopened in September as the Swindon Academy.
Top in Swindon borough was Ridgeway where 55 per cent of pupils achieved five or more A*-C grades.
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