WELCOME

WELCOME

DEAR VISITOR,

WELCOME TO OUR WEBSITE.

The figure 167 holds no great significance normally but for us it represents and evidences a powerfully positive journey.

It is the average points score of the young people who left our care and education in June of this year: a large and lively and hugely engaging group who successfully gathered a diverse collection of GCSEs and other accreditation and in doing so enhanced their life-chances and gave us huge professional pride and satisfaction.

For each exam or accreditation success there are points that accumulate and 167 compares favourably not only with our previous performance (22 pts in 2008 and 120 in 2009) but with other comparable schools locally and nationally.

This is significant because of the school’s difficult past and its relatively recent emergence from Special Measures and hard earned dignity, worth and pride are returning to this community.

What is equally notable and significant is the collective effort of staff and students to achieve these admirable improvements.

The human journey of ups and downs is a colourful one in BESD schools like ours and such positive outcomes need huge emotional investment and professional determination from staff and a willingness to engage and commit from our young people.

So thanks and respect as always to those staff and students: you are stars all of you!

Thanks too to parents and carers who support and value us and to the broad community of governors and fellow professionals who call us to account but support and encourage us also. Thanks to our neighbours for putting up with us.

We remain committed to sustaining and accelerating our improvement because, as we keep telling them, our students are precious and as good or better than any others anywhere and can achieve their goals and dreams and it remains a privilege for all of us as staff to help them on that eventful, sometimes troubling, often difficult but always worthwhile journey.

See you on the road to improvement of self and school sometime?

Michael MacCourt

Headteacher

As head-teacher welcome to my page and links...

These have been challenging but quietly and steadily encouraging times for Barley Lane. We are a school for children and young people (boys) experiencing emotional, social and behavioural challenges: a school with a difficult and troubled history only recently successfully removed from “special measures” and now seeking to move on from a “notice to improve” from Ofsted.