Alban Middle: outstanding school saved from closure becomes Academy
Teachers, pupils, Governors and the giant St Alban puppet celebrate
An outstanding Bedfordshire middle school, Alban Middle School has thwarted the threat of closure within two years, and opened on Friday April 1st as the Church of England’s second academy under the 2010 Academies Act to open in the East of England.
It took a Mayor’s promise, a general election, the axing of the Building Schools for the Future programme and two consultations to reach the point of the school having a future.
Pupils, parents, teachers and School Governors voiced strong opposition to the planned closure of the school, a consequence of Bedford Borough’s plan to abolish middle schools. Together, they endured fourteen months from November 2009, knowing that school would close even though it had an ‘outstanding’ Ofsted inspection.
But Bedford Borough’s reorganisation would be impossible without money from the Building Schools for the Future programme and the Government’s public spending review last October brought that to an end.
The process to overturn the notice of closure was then started, but it was not until February 2011 that the Alban Church of England Academy got the final go ahead.
Pupils, teachers were joined by parents, Governors, local Councillors and the ten-foot carnival puppet of St Alban, Britain’s first martyr, who normally helps St Albans Cathedral celebrate the founder of the cathedral and the city, to celebrate the school’s new status at a special assembly on Friday. His presence was the Cathedral’s gift to another place carrying the same name in St Albans Diocese, which covers Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.
A fanfare, composed by the school’s head of music, was played by the school’s wind band and pupils filed past an enormous celebration cake and collected their special badges.
The story of the school’s salvation from closure was then told very much by the pupils in their own way – through a drama in which there was a battle against an aggressor in the land of Alban.
Older children, from year 8, recited the poem they had composed to describe their feelings about the new beginnings for Alban and the things that make Alban so special..
The new school was then dedicated by the Revd Margaret Marshall before the school hymn was sung.
Chair of Governor’s, Andrew Haworth said, “"Alban has been and always will be about the pupils and the conversion to Academy status was initially driven by the need to secure the survival of the school: a school which OFSTED found not only to be Outstanding, but which was also stated to offer excellent value for money. It has only been through an incredible amount of hard work on the part of the school, the Governors, the Diocese of St Albans and everyone associated with the school that we have reached this point. For the first time in over 5 years Alban Middle School has a safe and secure future, where we can all refocus on the betterment of the school for the individuals that really count: the pupils."
