Ryde Academy


Ryde Academy, is an academy status Secondary school, including sixth form, located in Ryde on the Isle of Wight, England.

History

Education on the school site began with Ryde High School which was a 13–18 school built and opened in 1964 to accommodate the expanding population of Ryde, the largest town on the Isle of Wight. The school was successful in achieving a Specialist Languages Status and a Media and Arts Specialism. In 2008 the Isle of Wight education authority decided to abolish the tripartite education system and instead adopt the two stage, Primary School and Secondary school model used by the majority of authorities in England. According to the new two stage model Ryde High School would be extended from the 712 pupils of 13–18 age range, and it would become an Academy for 1200 pupils aged 11–18.
Academy chains were invited to bid for the contract to run the new Ryde Academy 11–18 school. The contract was won by Academies Enterprise Trust which took over Ryde Academy in 2012.
In 2014, Ryde Academy was successful in acquiring the site of a local primary school which was closing, and this became the new Haylands Sixth Form Centre.
The last headteacher of Ryde High School was Linda McGowan. The first Principal of Ryde Academy was Rob Hoddle who resigned in 2013. He was replaced by the Vice Principal, Debbie Price, who became acting Principal in Nov 2013 until a new Principal could be appointed. Dr Rory Fox was appointed as Executive Principal to provide external support to Mrs Price. Eric Jackson took over leadership of the Academy in January 2015, and Joy Ballard was appointed as Principal for September 2015.

Academic achievements

In 2007 Ryde High School was commended by the Department for Education for its achievements with disadvantaged pupils. In 2010, before Ryde High School became Ryde Academy, it was judged by OFSTED to be providing a "Satisfactory" quality of education. In its first inspection as an Academies Enterprise Trust school, OFSTED judged that standards were "inadequate".
GCSE results since 2004 have improved as follows:
Date5GCSE Progress 8 results
200432%n/a
200739%n/a
201041%n/a
201351%n/a
201654%-0.41

In the summer of 2014 Ryde Academy reported its biggest ever improvement in results, with a 200% improvement in the proportion of pupils gaining A/A* grades In the Summer of 2015, when AET asked Eric Jackson to lead Ryde Academy, the GCSE results plummeted to 36%.
A level results have gone from 3% of pupils gaining A/A* results in 2010, to 50% of pupils gaining A/A* in 2016.
In terms of its OFSTED grades, the Academy has improved steadily from "inadequate" in 2013 to "requires improvement" in 2014, to "good" in Nov 2016. The leader of the Isle of Wight Council, Jonathan Bacon, said: "This is great news...I have no doubt that the school will continue to build upon this achievement..." Principal, Joy Ballard, said: "I'm fed up reading about what a bad deal the island's education system seems to be giving to its kids."

Extra curricular and community achievements

In 2014 there was a crackdown on school uniform which led to an estimated 250 to 300 pupils being removed from lessons and sent home or placed in isolation, due to uniform infringements. which included issues with skirt length, shoes and socks, and trousers. Some pupils were sent home and some were placed in Isolation and the incident received widespread coverage from BBC South Today, The Times, The Telegraph, The Sun and the Loose Women television show. As a result of the Academy's action's some parents removed their children from the school and Academies Enterprise Trust said that they fully supported Ryde Academy.
In 2014 a controversy erupted when teaching unions at Ryde academy were challenged for defending poorly performing teachers who were accused of letting down the education of the children within the academy. Matters came to a head in Feb 2015 when under-performing union members were due to be dismissed, but Ian Comfort, the CEO of Academies Enterprise Trust intervened to prevent that from taking place.
In Jan 2015 OFSTED criticised the Academies Enterprise Trust for failing to provide enough support to Ryde Academy in order to help the Academy to improve standards at a faster rate. When academic standards at neighbouring Sandown Bay Academy collapsed and Academies Enterprise Trust were unable to improve the school, they announced in 2017 a plan to close Sandown Bay Academy and the transfer of all the pupils to Ryde Academy. The Principal and governors of Ryde announced that they had not even been consulted about the plan and that they had discovered it from AET's press statements. There were widespread protests across the Isle of Wight about the poor performance of AET and the way that AET were behaving with the Island's schools, leading to a demand that AET should be removed from managing all schools on the Isle of Wight, including Ryde Academy.

Notable former pupils and staff