A HEADTEACHER says his school will meet national exam targets by next year – saving it from possible closure – despite having the lowest marks in the district.
Featherstone Technology College had 23 per cent of students achieving five A*-C GCSE grades including maths and English last year – the lowest out of all district schools in last week's secondary league tables.
The school must meet a government be
nchmark of 30 per cent by 2011 or it could be closed and replaced with an academy or turned into a National Challenge trust site, where it is taken over by a nearby successful school and forms a partnership with a university or business.
But principal Dr Stuart Wilson said a number of unavoidable factors had led to the 23 per cent mark – down from 41 per cent – and success next year was already in hand.
He told the Express: "Of course if we look at this year's results, they are very disappointing.
"However, there are factors that have contributed to this.
"The first is that last year we happened to have in a lot of children with special needs and we take all the children in Wakefield who are in wheelchairs or have complex special needs – that contributes more than half of the drop.
"We are also disappointed with our English results but we've taken action for addressing that for this year.
"The maths results also dropped at 13 out of 18 secondary schools because of the changes to the way the assessments were done."
He added: "The good news in terms of exams is that we haven't got the number of children with complex special needs this year, and that based on the exams we've already taken, we are only two per cent off our previous high mark of 40 per cent.
"That's not based on what we hope will happen, it is the case.
"We're not worried about the national challenge – our students will return to their previous levels of success."
