There’s been an unusually rapid turnover of senior leadership staff at the Oasis Arena Academy in South Norwood, as GENE BRODIE reports
A secondary academy that opened on its new site in September 2016 is already on to its third school principal.
And Oasis Arena Academy, built at a cost of £22million to the taxpayer to be a six-forms-of-entry school, currently has just 357 pupils.
The new school is operating with just three year groups at present, but that ought to mean 540 pupils – meaning that it is currently operating well below the capacity. Oasis Arena Academy was built to accommodate 900 pupils once fully operational.
In a statement to Inside Croydon this week, Oasis Community Learning, the multi-academy trust which runs the school, said, “The Academy is opening gradually, filling year by year until we offer our full provision in September 2019. We currently have 357 students on school roll, across three year groups.”
Oasis claims that applications for Year 7 places in September “are up”, though they fail to specify by how many.
The Oasis chain, which has its head offices next to a church (but which maintains that it does not have a “religious ethos”), is the country’s third largest, running 49 state schools in England and Wales, with five of them in Croydon. It has recently been reported that OCL’s chief executive, John Murphy, has had his pay hiked to more than £200,000 per year.
The Arena Academy, which was given planning permission to be built on a compact site, using supposedly protected Metropolitan Open Land, also appears to be having some issues over its school leadership.
Tom Raymond was revealed at the start of this term as the school’s third principal in less than two years.
The opening of Oasis Arena Academy’s in September 2016. Steve Chalke, the Baptist preacher and Oasis founder, left, and £200,000 pa Oasis CEO John Murphy is second left. School principal Craig Griffith (second from the right) has left
Craig Griffiths, the school’s original principal, left in something of a rush last summer, due to “personal reasons”, according to an Oasis spokesperson.
Griffiths was initially replaced by “experienced executive principal” Di Morgan, who Oasis’s press office says, “has overseen a swift improvement in standards across the school while ensuring continuity for our students, bolstered by the recruitment of two new deputy principals and three assistant principals…”.
Mere teachers are clearly not quite good enough for Oasis academies. There are no fewer than nine members of staff listed on the academy’s website with the word “principal” in their job title. Perhaps Oasis follows the Peter Principle?
“We are now pleased to confirm that Mr Thomas Raymond, an experienced school leader who has a track record of driving up progress and standards for all students, has been appointed as Oasis Academy Arena’s new permanent principal. Oasis is committed to providing our young people and the local community with the ‘Outstanding’ school that they deserve, and thanks to Ms Morgan and Mr Raymond the Academy is in an extremely strong position moving forwards,” the press officer assured.
Senior staff from Oasis Arena Academy were this week due to meet with council officials to discuss the school’s decision effectively to sub-let part of its taxpayer-funded facilities to a private gym operator, 3D Leisure. Council lawyers have been poring over the community use agreement line by line.
As Inside Croydon reported last week, local residents, sports clubs and community groups have experienced difficulties in hiring or accessing the new facilities built in the school. When planning permission was granted for the school, originally proposed under the previous Tory administration at the Town Hall, it was supposed to offer “Olympic legacy” facilities for South Norwood.
The churn of senior management at the school may have been, in part, a cause of this access issue. The introduction of 3D Leisure to operate a private gym business, and notices offering the multi-use games area for hire that have recently appeared, seem to indicate a shift in position.
Teacher of Maths: Tom Raymond, Arena Academy’s new principal
“Oasis Community Learning refutes the accusation that there has been an ‘abuse of public property’ with regards to 3D Leisure’s operation of a gym at Oasis Academy Arena, and is satisfied that the community use agreement is being fulfilled,” the spokesperson for the academy chain said this week.
For his part Raymond (described as “Teacher of Maths” by the school’s website, rather than the rather mundane, perhaps old school “maths teacher”), says,that the school is “dedicated, unswervingly, to serving our children, our families, and our local communities”.
Raymond says, “We believe that every parent is entitled to expect the school that they have chosen for their child to provide their child with a first-rate education, and at Oasis Academy Arena we shoulder this responsibility profoundly, with pride and determination.”
And in the new principal’s case, hopefully for more than a year.
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network- Inside Croydon is the borough’s only independent news source, and still based in the heart of Croydon
- 1 MILLION PAGE VIEWS IN 2017 (January to September)
- ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS 2017: Inside Croydon was source for two award-winning nominations in Private Eye magazine’s annual celebration of civic cock-ups
- “Excellent scandal-digging”: Patrick Kidd, The Times political diary columnist
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, a residents’ or business association or a local event to publicise, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
The ‘acadamisation’ of education and the ‘Carillionisation’ of public service provision. I wonder if they are related?
Let’s hope the next recruitment as head of this Oasis School is not John the Baptist. They are not very careful with their Heads.
Lets not forget that Ashburton Learning Village, owned & maintained by Vinci under PFI still has the equivalent of a new school, Circa £21 million, still outstanding. The issue with under capacity schools is that the funding formula for schools is based on the number of pupils registered. There are a numbet of schools that are significantly under capacity, such as Quest, St Mary’s to name just two. These schools then have issues in affording teaching staff which then reduces the curriculum they can offer and you end up with teachers teaching subjects they know little about, such as Design & Technology teachers teaching Geography. This then results in low GCSE grades which in turn leads to low applications & the vicious circle continues. Quest was effectively a new school, completely redeveloped approximately 4 years ago, considerable cost again.
The argument with this school was akways that there was no need for it in such close proximity to Oasis Ashburton, Edenham, Harris South Norwood all within a mile and a half. Edenham with a potential in take of 240 has spare capacity & St Mary’s 2 miles ish away is consistently just over half full out of a potential intake of 180 . These schools will struggle to achieve given the lack of funding derived from pupil numbers.
Reports that low birth rates are resulting in Primary schools reducing their forms of entry means thst in circa 6 years all these shiney new schools gifted to the likes of Oasis will be under used, under resourced for many years to come, dragging on the Councils coffers & a burden on the Community in which they are meant to serve.
We’ve asked the council for the numbers at each secondary school in the borough, and the number of pupils they are supposed to accommodate. We should have the answer by… well… April?
Begs the question–why do we need yet another secondary school— an annexe of Wallington Grammar– on a site yet to be determined— when we have all these under-capacity schools ?.
The prediction of pupil numbers coming through each year must be a defective process, as for years we have had many schools running at over-capacity, resulting in already small playgrounds being clogged up with temporary classrooms, many of which are “temporary” for 30 years !
Over the last year or so, I have been glad to see a number of primary schools in Coulsdon and Purley getting good quality new buildings to replace the time-expired portacabin classrooms..
Lets hope that , if the birth rate is dropping, these primaries don`t end up half empty too.