Islington Tribune - News: School hit by loss of fifth head

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Islington Tribune - by TOM FOOT
Published: 2 May 2008

SCHOOL HIT BY LOSS OF FIFTH HEAD

Parents turn on governors after latest departure

A PRIMARY school has been thrown into turmoil after the fifth headteacher in five years walked out.
Parents at the gates of Clerkenwell Parochial yesterday (Thursday) blamed school governors for a lack of continuity in the wake of head Alison Forbes’s shock resignation.
One former governor said: “It is absolutely disgraceful what has been happening at Clerkenwell. They could not have made more mistakes if they had tried. Five heads in five years is too much.
“Clerkenwell has always been one of the best schools in Islington but now it is at rock bottom. What we want is a really strong head to come in and for a change in the governors.”
Ms Forbes arrived at Clerkenwell Parochial – Islington’s oldest school and once a favourite with the Queen, who made numerous visits – from a school in Birmingham where 100 parents had signed a petition calling for her to leave.
The Amwell Street primary school was once ranked among the best in Islington but is now third bottom in the league tables.
More than 40 children have been pulled out of the school since September 2006.
The Tribune revealed last year how internal documents showed 96 per cent of nine-year-old pupils at the school struggled to write.
Parent governors say structures are in place to take the school forward and that they have been “unlucky” with their choice of headteachers. They are currently wooing Ann Dwulit, head at St Luke’s in Finsbury, to move to Clerkenwell permanently in September.
Ms Dwulit will run both schools as a “federation” under governors’ proposals being fought by parents.
At a meeting on Wednesday night parent governors expecting to push through the plans were forced into a climbdown. The planned vote was shelved after dozens of parents warned they had not been properly consulted.
A council spokesman said: “Alison Forbes’s departure is something she had been planning for some time.”
The spokesman said a partnership between Clerkenwell Parochial and St Luke’s had been in place since April 2007, with Ms Dwulit playing a strategic role in both schools. She was described in her school’s most recent Ofsted inspection report as having shown “outstanding leadership”.
The partnership was arranged with the full agreement of the governing bodies of both schools, the London Diocesan Board for Schools and the two headteachers.

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