Thursday night was the termly meeting of the Governors of Prestwich Arts College (formerly Prestwich High). This is one of the two local schools on which I represent you as a Governor.

There were two particularly interesting issues to report on:

Bury Review of Learning

We had a presenation from Bury’s Assistant Director of Learning about a review that is planned for Bury’s schools about the “future of leaning”. This is of particular interest to Prestwich Arts College because of the horrific experience the school had to go through a couple of years ago with the then Labour administration of Bury’s botched attempts to close two high schools – Prestwich Arts being one of them.

I think its best to withhold judgement on the current review. Certainly the Authority seems clear that the review process needs to focus on “learning” rather than on pupil numbers, and this is very welcome. I do worry that things arn’t going to be so easy when difficult decisions have to be made.

Assertive Mentoring

Prestwich Arts is a hugely exciting school to be involved with. Despite the difficult process when the school was threatened with closure, there are some hugely exciting things going on to continually improve on the levels of achievement of its pupils.

We received a presentation on one such initiative, “active mentoring” for Year 10. This is a new programme which the school is introducing to work closely with every single pupil in the year coming up to the GSCE time on an individual basis. Schools that have tried this individual and tailored approach have had some staggering imrovements in their GCSE scores, and hopefully this will be the result at PAC. I know that a great many staff have put in a significant amount of time and effort into the process for which the school is very grateful.

Tim