'Super school' fails after 6 months

The first of the Government's flagship "super schools" is failing only six months after it opened, the Evening Standard can reveal.

A hit squad has now been sent in to rescue Greig City Academy in Haringey.

A new "chief executive" is to start work after Easter, raising doubts over the future role of the £80,000-a-year principal, Graham Horsewood.

The development is a major embarrassment to ministers, who hailed the academy programme as the way ahead for inner-city education.

City academies get millions in extra funding from the Government and freedom from local authority control.

Evening Standard exposed widespread indiscipline and poor academic standards at the school last year.

Supply teacher Kate Gibbs described a nightmare two weeks during which she was confronted by a group of 16-year-old boys and thrown across a desk after she tried to stop a violent struggle.

She was also regularly sworn at by pupils and unfairly accused of racism, a ploy used by rowdy students to duck responsibility for disruptive behaviour. And she was shocked by the levels of illiteracy among pupils and by the despair of teachers who appeared to have "given up".

Six months on, ministers have acted after an unofficial Ofsted inspection found indiscipline was still rife - and more than one in four of lessons below standard.

Ofsted confirmed that a school where such a high level of poor lessons was uncovered by an official inspection would almost certainly be declared failing.

Today's disclosure casts a shadow over the entire academy programme.

The equally ambitious Fresh Start programme was abandoned two years ago after the resignations of a series of "superheads" brought in to turn round failing schools. All complained that ministers expected too much too soon. Now the academy programme, devised by former Education Secretary David Blunkett, may have claimed its first casualty.

The Haringey school, formerly the St David and St Katharine Church of England Secondary School, opened last September as the first of the new academies. Others have opened in Bexley and Middlesbrough and as many as 50 more are planned, several in London.

The Government has been investing more than £10million in re-building the school, with a further £2 million from the Church of England and the Greig Trust charity. The school is also receiving an extra £123 per pupil.

It took in only 120 new pupils last September - it has capacity for 200 - and of those, only 60 identified it as their first choice. Sources say the number of first-choice admissions is expected to double next year.

After the Standard's exposé¬ Mr Horsewood and the school's governors promised an inquiry. But six months on, staff are in revolt. Members of the NUT at the school - many inexperienced temporary staff from overseas - have indicated unanimously they would back strike action over excessive workloads, and a ballot is planned.

More alarming for the Department for Education were the findings of last month's Ofsted inspection. It found some improvements, with nearly 70 per cent of teaching for older pupils good or very good. But overall, 26 per cent of lessons were poor.

The governors backed the decision to call in Ofsted, to "benchmark" their own assessment. Now, Education Department officials have drafted in an experienced and successful head, David Triggs, principal of the Greensward College in Hockley, Essex, to take over.

The officials acknowledged the difficulties the school faced coping with pupils with "multiple deprivations", but said: "Progress needs to be made much more quickly".