Dear Friend

 

 

Our prime concern is ensuring the best education for young people in the West of Gateshead. At Ryton Comprehensive we have an established highly successful school of over 1250 students which is oversubscribed. We have developed an excellent teaching and support staff.

 

We recognise that Hookergate School has similarly made great progress in raising standards. Sadly Hookergate School has suffered from a reduction in student numbers over the past few years and the Local Authority has decided it must close.

 

The options are clearly stated in the cabinet report but we feel it might help to explain our response to them. All options involve the closure of Hookergate School and the council report makes it clear that there is not an option to leave things as they are.

 

Option A

  • Keeps Ryton Comprehensive open
  • Closes Hookergate School
  • Hookergate staff will lose their jobs, and be able to apply for new posts in an extended Ryton school.
  • Seeks to build a new school on an unspecified site in Greenside. This would of course be dependent on whether Government funding is available for a new school and whether planning permission would be given for greenbelt land.

 

Option B

  • Closes Ryton Comprehensive School
  • Closes Hookergate School
  • All 140 members of staff at Ryton lose their jobs as well as that of the Hookergate staff.  All would have to apply for new jobs in a new structure. 
  • Seeks to build a new school on an unspecified site in Greenside. This would of course be dependent on whether Government funding is available for a new school and whether planning permission would be given for greenbelt land.
  • This option allows for “competition” – in brief this means that the Local Authority may no longer be in control of the new school for example it could be an independent academy.

 

Option C

  • Keeps Ryton Comprehensive open
  • Hookergate school closes
  • Hookergate staff will lose their jobs, and be able to apply for new posts in an extended Ryton school.
  • Transition arrangements are put in place to accommodate students on the Ryton site and when funding is available Ryton Comprehensive will have new buildings and refurbishment.

 

We believe that it is the staff and traditions of a school which have the greatest impact on maintaining standards. Ryton Comprehensive School achieves excellent results, has an outstanding reputation for pastoral care and this is achieved by well established highly effective members of staff.  If those teachers and support staff find themselves in a position where they lose their jobs and have to re-apply to a newly formed Governing Body they will find it very difficult not to be distracted from their core purpose – educating children and encouraging them to fulfil their potential.

 

Inevitably some teachers and technical and administrative staff will look for jobs elsewhere as they will be unsettled by the threat of school closure. Once this trend starts there is the risk that something which has taken many years to build up will be destroyed in a matter of months. Unfortunately all three options pose this threat for Hookergate staff but at least with Option C it may be possible for them to be considered for new jobs in Ryton in a positive and welcoming way rather than under the stress of Option B where no such guarantee exists.

 

The environmental factors of re-siting Ryton Comprehensive School where over 52% of students walk to school is a concern to us. We are concerned that the walk from Ryton and Crawcrook to Greenside involves crossing a busy bypass and that some of the roads and pavements leading to Greenside are just not adequate to cope.

 

We also believe that Option B could result in instability and lack of continuity for all students involved. Option B is the biggest risk to the stability of the school and the positive learning of our children. While we have a great deal of sympathy for the position that the pupils, parents, staff and community of Hookergate find themselves in, we do not see how closing a good, improving, thriving and over-subscribed school can be the best solution to the problem. It appears that all three options are being proposed on geographical rather than educational grounds. How can it be right to solve the problems of one community by creating unnecessary problems for another community?

 

 

We believe that the strongly preferred option from the perspective of staff and governors at Ryton Comprehensive is to recommend Option C to the Council.

 

 

Ryton parent governors