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System leadership
Unlocking achievement and
raising aspirations
Haywood Academy in Stoke-on-Trent have created a
multi-academy trust that is helping to reverse a trend
of underachievement in the city
We hear much of the need to raise aspirations and unlock
achievement in schools across the country. Accelerated
progress is the paradigm of the day. Nowhere is this
more acutely in the spotlight, or indeed under scrutiny, than
in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire. The city is the third-worst
performing local authority in the country with 60% of its
students having never experienced a school judged as ‘good’ or
‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. The city is also home to MP Tristram
Hunt, the shadow Secretary of State for Education. So one might
say, with a general election looming, the pressure is on.
The city has a track record of underachievement at both
primary and secondary levels and for many years has not merely
lagged, but dramatically fallen behind the educational progress
seen in many other areas of the country.
However, the winds of change are moving quickly through
the city, fuelled by an educational landscape in flux. The national
setting, that some liken to the educational equivalent of the
‘forming of the great continents’ many thousands of years ago,
is helping to drive quick change, borne out of a desire for more
freedom and autonomy.
One of the leaders in this revolution is Haywood Academy,
one of the largest schools in the city and an 11-16 converter
academy situated in Burslem, in the north of Stoke, the most
deprived part of the city. Despite DfE data showing that primary
achievement in Burslem for the past seven years has been the
lowest of all wards in the city, this has not stopped Haywood
raising aspirations and unlocking the achievement of its students.
The academy is one of the most improved secondary schools
Summer 2014 | 7