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In the, um, area that I, that my current academy is in - it's Edmonton in north London - it's an
area with very high levels of disadvantage and my academy is offering an outstanding
education for the local community. Um, but in this community there's also a severe shortage
of pupil places, so there are a lot of children at the moment, um, of primary age, that are
having difficulty in finding a school, a local school for them, and there's also a shortage
of excellent education. And so, when we became and academy it made sense to me to look at
the free school legislation and make a proposal to open up another new school offering a similar
education that we're already able to offer our local community, and it is much-needed.
I've always been interested in, Michael Gove mentioned the KIPP model and the charter school
model and I went to the States last year to look at those schools and I was quite taken
with the idea that successful schools were opening up their own schools, to further influence
and impact on education more widely. So I always, sort of, had that model in my mind
and I felt that this, in a way, our proposal is a similar model to that: an existing, successful
school, using it's own capacity, with excellent staff, to start up another new school.
Key indicators for success will be that in an area with really high levels of disadvantage
that the children will leave my school, at the age of 11, with very high standards and high
levels of achievement – similarly to the school that I'm already running. And, um,
Michael Gove spoke about a narrowing, I think it was Lord Hill, narrowing the attainment
gaps; that's absolutely our overriding, over-arching ethos of opening this new school, to narrow
the gaps for those children that are poorer and, we know, fall behind from a very early
age, absolutely making a difference to those children in communities where it's most needed.
I think you have to be brave, because we had a lot of media attention by becoming an academy
in the first place. Um, that's almost forgotten now because they're now focusing on us and
our free school proposal, so you have to be quite brave. You have to be sure of your reasons
why you want to open a school, um, as long as it's to do with the children and as long
as there's an absolute moral purpose behind it, then I don't think you can go wrong, because
actually the local media have been very supportive, once I've explained that to them.