TWO years ago I asked Cllr Melinda Tilley in her role as cabinet member for education about the unacceptably high levels of recorded absence at St Gregory the Great School.
I now discover that the school, which is part of an academy trust placed into financial special measures earlier this year, now has the third highest exclusion levels among secondary schools in the county during the autumn term of 2015.
Matters must have come to a very sorry state if the new headteacher felt it necessary to suspend so many of the school’s pupils.
Were the school not an academy, I would be asking for an investigation into the state of education at the school.
However, Oxfordshire has no direct responsibility for the school since it became an academy, a state of affairs the Tory government wants to impose on all local schools.
As a result, until either Ofsted or the Catholic diocese decide to review the school, there seems no other body able with responsibility to both help the school improve and monitor its performance.
Cllr JOHN HOWSON
St Margaret’s Division
Lib Dem spokesperson on Education
Oxfordshire County Council
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