My life has been pulled down.

Indeed she may have been corrupt, but she also managed to transform pupil learning at that school. At the end of the day if you had a daughter, which school would you rather she had attended?

 

I do have a daughter and, working as a teacher in Manchester at the time, saw what a bloody awful, politically driven local education authority it was, where excellence meant nothing and anyone who tried to improve standards was continually baulked by pigeon brained local councillors. I moved out of the peoples' republic of Manchester for the sake of my kids' education. The Whalley Range head managed to do what she did despite the local politicians because they didn't dare interfere due to her very close political friendships with cabinet ministers. She was lauded nationally and I attended many meetings where MEC education officers fawned over her. All the time she was paying out back handers, employing family inappropriately and not declaring the full payments made to consultants. On the one hand she got good results but she must, and will, be sacked for her corruption. Her behaviour can never be justified by the school results.

 

My dad used to be one of the main Librarians for Manchester City Council and he got out because he was sick of the politcal spin and PCness of everything. This was 10 years ago.

There are good schools in Manchester but they are to be found in Trafford and have Grammar in their title

Parrs Wood is not such a bad school either.

 

There are other good schools in Trafford that don't have Grammar in the title, I work in one! We're a secondary modern that's lost the 35% of most able kids to grammar schools and still get results that put many schools to shame. Trafford is a rather middle class and well off area, which rather proves Bob's earlier point.Parr's Wood probably enjoys Manchester's best catchment too, Didsbury the Heaton's and Cheadle, very nice.
Take a map and stick pins in where social depravation is prevalant and in those spots educational underachievement will be rife. Until that is addressed some schools will never be able to succeed. I've been for interviews recently at a couple of schools and pulled out as I couldn't see how I could make a difference, and I'm not interested in simply joining a war of attrition. If schools want to improve most can, but it involves a lot of hard work and a will to improve from not just Senior Leaders, but all staff. Showing videos and entering everyone for lower tiers to get passes won't achieve that.
There's a school in Oldham that was in the top six for improvement this year, but when you take away the pupils that didn't pass English and Math's GCSE they were in the bottom two percent nationally, how did they achieve this miraculous result? GNVQ Art, the equivalent of 4 GCSE's and then doing a GCSE in it as well. Real cooking the books there!

I agree entirely Bob, I think it's a real shame she behaved so dishonestly as a school manager, but she's going to get what she deserves. She obviously had talents but her financial dealings can only be considered crooked.

 

What about Stretford High? That seems pretty much as bad as Ducie was, if not worse in some ways.

GNVQ has its place but there is no way on earth it is worth 5 GCSEs.

Not all of Didsbury is nice though, there council estate can be quite bad, it is the same as Chorlton, there are some quite rough parts to it.

Chorlton High school for example includes poor parts such as Whalley Range although it is still one of the better schools in Manchester I much prefered Ducie to its former title Oakwood.

 

Stretford high is improving, and has made progress. No school has a perfect catchment area, but Parr's Woods is much better than most. Trafford has some of Manchester's most deprived area's in it. There's Partington and Carrington, Sale's racecourse estate, and then there's the cultural wasteland that is Old Trafford
On the whole though it's a well to do area. Evidenced by the fact that the schools don't recieve the subsidies from the government that Manchester, Salford, Bury, Oldham and Rochdale do in the form of Excellence in Cities money.

 

Just thought I would up date this thread. I am suffering from swine flu (been in bed all week but starting to recover now) and such such I haven't got any sleeping pattern left. It is sleep for a couple of hours, wake up, sleep wake up etc. I woke up thinking about my school life and something was still on my mind was the Ducie of 1995 really new?

I went onto the image archives and found Ducie from 1972. By looking at these it became obvious apart from some new building in 1995 the main building was just re-shelled. All they did was tear down the old cladding and windows, replace them with bricks and UPVC windows, re plaster it, re wire it and you have what looks like a brand new building. Ducie is now long since gone and its now flats.

The replacement school is doing very well and some of the staff I have spoken to (I work for a lot a lot ex and current teachers because of my job) are actually happy there. More importantly GCSE results have improved from 11% to 63% since I left in 1999. So it seems that the plan worked.

Now the sad news is that my primary school built in 1906 which I consider it to be an outstanding example of an Edwardian building is going to get the chop. There is no official planning applied for but I have found that the rumours which I first red on the Guardian many years ago are true from somebody very high up in the council

It seems at 103 years old its no longer fit for purpose, the problem its next to a small busy late 60's shopping centre and they want to tear the lot down including the school.

My university building is still waste ground, I wonder if management at Salford will admit that was a big mistake? The idea was to sell for the land for cash but since the credit crunch and the fact its in a horrible area meant there is no demand.

There is still something really bugging me about Ducie and I am not sure what. I think as much as I have affection for the place much of it is bitterness and hated that I feel cheated.

The irony is of all this everything around me has changed, but I am still stuck in the same bedroom I landed in way back in 1982.

I am the second youngest person in my block of houses but have lived here one of the longest. I am probably suffering slightly from post flu depression now too hence thinking of my past Before the flu I was really busy and happy making quite a bit of money now I have lost a lot of work and just can't seem to sleep.

 

Have I missed something?

Sorry abut the school but someone left a bunsen on a shade too long (a someone said) and the place has got trashed.

From the pic I don't think you can save that place.

I spent my younger years at a sleepy market -town in Wiltshire, Bradford -on -avon. Sleepy, unless the tales of rival gangs in the true are true. We moved away in '77. My (elder) brother maintains he would have been sucked ito it had we stayed.

 

GEORGE HARRISON .

Brainwashed

Brainwashed in our childhood
Brainwashed by the school
Brainwashed by our teachers
and brainwashed by their rules ... etc.