Should Standish High Become and Academy with Southlands High School in Chorley?

With one child attending Standish High School and another 2 to attend in future years it was a great interest to me as a parent to attend this week a meeting about the future of the school. Currently the school is under Wigan Council's control. If they go down this route they would leave that control and join with Southlands.

The head and chair of Governors blaming the Conservative Government for this change as they went on to say they were consulting on this now before the Conservative Government brought in Regional School Commissions (RSC). The school believes that if they do not do this now the RSC may in later years tell them which school to go with and that school may not be the school they want to go with.

What was interesting to me is that a High School can join in with a Primary School. Traditionally schools become an academy on their own but this is going less likely as schools are joining together and becoming a multi trust academy.

So  in the presentation it was confirmed that the schools would not be closed and a new one built but students of some subjects will travel from one site to another site for lessons. This is very bad in my opinion.

I asked why they wanted to join with a school out of Wigan Borough? They said that if St. Peters went down this route they may well go with St Maries primary school. So then why wouldn't Standish High go with Woodfold Primary School in Standish? This would be a natural partnership.

It became clear that the school is just consulting parents of children there now. My issue with this is that children of primary schools should be consulted because they are more likely to be effected by the changes. Also as a school as a local community high school I have put together a quick 5 question poll asking what your thoughts are and these results will feed into the consultation

Click here to do the poll and let us know what you think.