Last night was the regular meeting of the Governors of Prestwich Arts College on Heys Road. This is one of the two schools on which I serve as a school governor.

Last night there were two main issues that the Governors discussed:

Building Work
There are two really exciting building projects happening at PAC this year. Firstly a new dining room is being built, the school was the only high school in Bury without a dining room, so this is long overdue; secondly a new Arts Auditorium is being built in the land below Glebelands Road, and the former arts hall (Bracewell Hall) has been converted into a Creative and Media Suite. I’ve not seen the suite yet, but apparently its a top class facility that the school will be rightly very proud of. The new auditorium brings a welcome facility to Prestwich and will be available for broader community use.

Regrettably not everything that we had hoped to do can be done within the very tight financial framework that the school has to operate in. It had originally been hoped to build some new teaching facilities above the dining room (as a 2nd story), this will now not be possible at the present time. We agreed that we needed to have a look again at our longer term building strategy and what work needs to be done to take the school forward.

School Update
The headteacher was able to update us on a number of issues in the school over recent months:
– GCSE results: the school has had its BEST ever results for its GCSEs with the number of pupils getting the normal benchmark of 5 A*-C grades rising by 10%. This is a real achievement for the school, and particularly a recognition of the success of its “assertive mentoring” programme for the older pupils to help develop an enthusiasm and commitment to better grades among pupils. We did discuss a particular issue around the gender differences in results (girls doing better than boys). This is a national issue, but still one that the school is concerned about and looking at ways to encourage higher performance in boys.

Regrettebly almost 40 pupils who wanted to come to Prestwich Arts could not be accomodated
this year. This is a reflection of the success of the school and the changes that have been made in recent years.

Any questions, please ask!

Tim