Published: 12 September 2013
By TOM FOOT

A FLAGSHIP academy hailed as “the future of education” by Labour peer Lord Adonis has launched an internal review after the “majority of students” were forced into exam re-sits.

Geraldine Davies, principal of the new UCL Academy in Swiss Cottage, has written to all parents saying there has been “disappointment for some” and confirming that staff are looking through the school’s “performance data”.

Among a list of steps designed to rectify the problem quickly, former Ofsted chief Christine Gilbert will be brought in to provide guidance and to work on “further measures to enhance our support for students”.

The £26million school in Adelaide Road has not published its exam results – as an academy it does not answer to the council like Camden’s state-run secondaries – but Ms Davies’ letter said: “We expect the majority of students will continue with their AS programmes at A2.”

This effectively means pupils will carry on with less-demanding AS levels at a time when they are supposed to be working on full A-levels, the courses needed to secure places at university.

Some students will reduce the number of A-level courses they will take this year.

Amid the confusion and disappointment, some students have decided to return to their old schools elsewhere in Camden.

The futuristic-looking school, sponsored by UCL (University College London) in Bloomsbury, was officially opened earlier this year by Lord Adonis, New Labour architect of the academy system of breaking schools away from local authorities.

In March, he promised the academy would be an “outstanding success” and tweeted excitedly about what he had seen.

He has had to answer critics, many from within his own party, about the wisdom of taking schools out of the remit of a democratically-elected council, even if the sponsors are as well-respected as UCL.

“UCL Academy is one of the best and most innovative institutions to have been set up within the English education system in recent years,” he said at the official opening. “UCL Academy is the future of English education and it works.”

But Ms Davies said in her letter: “Despite the hard work of our students, the first set of Academy AS results has brought disappointment for some.” The letter says the school has made some “strong appointments” to its sixth-form in the wake of the results and confirms the help the school expects to receive from Ms Gilbert.

Ms Davies, headteacher for seven years at a school in west London, added: “The transition from GCSE to advanced study is never easy, and this was exacerbated for our students by the challenges of the building disruption in the first term.”

UCL Academy opened four months later than expected after a sub-contractor went into liquidation. The building was lauded as a school for the future, where classrooms are replaced with “superstudios”.

Its first pupils were dubbed “pioneers” for enrolling at UCL Academy, where every student must learn Mandarin and where hours have been shaken up to accommodate a later start.

Insiders have suggested some pupils may not be ready for the university-style approach to secondary school education brought in by UCL.

UCL – this week named the fourth best university in the world – is responsible for the standard of teaching at the academy, which is funded by the government but run independently of the family of Camden Council state schools.

Its methods include “multi-use space” classrooms, where three separate lessons are taught in an open-plan room. The school is split into Harry Potter Hogwarts-style houses named after constellations, which compete against each other for prizes and kudos throughout the school year.

The summer school bulletin revealed that “the annual tie-tying competition may well be won by Orion again, but if Equuleus have anything to do with it they will be wanting to maintain their success of being the house champions for 2012-2013”.

Councillor Angela Mason, Camden Council’s schools chief, said: “We understand the school’s disappointment about its results. We were very concerned about the impact on students’ education when BAM [the main contractor] told us they were unable to open the building by the date they had promised.

“As soon as we were told by BAM, we worked hard with the academy and the contractor to ensure the school and students had the best possible temporary facilities to support them in their learning.”