School visits

As well as being a councillor for Chorlton ward I am the executive member for Children’s Services and I have the lead responsibility for education and schools in the city. As a result I spend a lot of time visiting schools throughout Manchester. Manchester’s schools face many challenges but many schools are doing excellent work and I hope the successes of the best schools can be spread to others.

Last Monday I visited the Willows Primary School in Wythenshawe. This excellent primary school has managed to achieve outstanding in two OFSTEDs despite being in one of the most deprived areas of the city

The following day I visited St Peter’s RC High School in Gorton. This high school has also achieved outstanding in its OFSTED at the end of last year and in the last two years has had a massive improvement in the number of pupils achieving 5 A*-Cs including English and maths. They have done this by focusing on the basics, and providing one to one tuition, as well as using new approaches such as gardening therapy.

On Thursday I attended a ceremony to mark a significant stage in the re building of Acacias Primary School and extension and refurbishment of Levenshulme High School for Girls. This is a very innovative £23.7m project. It brings together the work of the Building Schools for the Future programme which is rebuilding or refurbishing all Manchester’s secondary schools with the primary school rebuilding programme. The two schools will share a site and have some shared facilities.