Why Helen aims to open doors

THE view from Tamarside Community College belies the name on a dismal rainy August afternoon. I can barely see to the edge of the playing fields and the Tamar can only be imagined.

I’m struggling with the vision closer up, too. There is a lot of biffing and banging inside the entrance but otherwise little evidence of a new direction being charted for the Plymouth school.

The old name adorns the outside of the building, even though the new status as Britain’s first marine academy is now four days away.

The hoped-for big rebuild — always a next rather than a first step — for Marine Academy Plymouth (Map) is on hold. The new coalition government’s plans to scrap the previous administration’s Building Schools for the Future programme was a blow.

Map and the city’s other new academy, All Saints, the former John Kitto Community College, hoped to get £35 million between them to transform the school buildings.

There is, though, a new principal, Helen Mathieson, and her vision for Marine Academy Plymouth is crisp and clear.

“My job is to open all the doors, the opportunities, for children so they become adults with choices,” she says.

“We need to encourage them to be aspirational and to develop their skills and confidence.

“Social mobility is a strain that has always run through me, a motivation to be in the education system.”

So far, so predictable, perhaps. What else would any educationalist say?

But she adds quite bluntly, “We are focusing on driving standards up” and sees the set-up at Map as ideal for both improving results and standards and opening those doors.

Academies are state-funded, as are regular comprehensives. But they control their own budgets and can spend as they choose the money the local education authority, the city council in Map’s case, used to spend on their behalf.

All academies are specialist schools with sponsors. Map’s areas are technology and science with a special emphasis on the sea. Two sponsors match closely the school’s focus: the University of Plymouth and Cornwall College. The third, the city council, offers continuity and demonstrates wider community support.

“Being an academy frees up the leadership to support the school’s aims,” says Mrs Mathieson. “And that is not only about me: there is a very strong leadership team here.

“We are changing the curriculum in order to engage better with students and match the marine theme. We are in a marine city which is growing. We want to exploit the opportunities that the city brings and equip students with the skills they need for that.”

The link with the university will be a two-way flow, she says. Courses with a marine theme are being developed jointly with the university which will send staff to the school.

Pupils and specialist staff from Map will also visit the university and have access to facilities there and to lecturers and students.

Similar links are being set up with Cornwall College and connections developing with city firms will help work-based learning.

Mrs Mathieson’s own education was at an-all-girl grammar school in Cheshire. She grew up on the Wirral in Neston, a town that has more in common with the poorer, industrial side of the peninsula than the affluent commuter belt on the western side where the town lies.

She was lucky, she says, to have gone to school in the early 1960s, ‘an evolutionary, revolutionary time when education opened up to working class people’ like herself.

She adds that she would have ‘never, ever’ gone on to higher education if the current tuition fees system were in place. Even so ‘university was not on our horizon’ and she went to Cheshire College of Higher Education where she trained to be a teacher.

The South West connection started when she was a student teacher.

“I came to Cornwall on my first student vacation and met my husband-to-be in the county,” she says. “There has been that South West connection ever since.

“My first job was in Saltash School (now the town’s community college) in 1973.

“I love the South West and will never, ever move away.”

Husband Stuart was a hotelier when they met. He later trained in education and is head of the hospitality and catering courses at Cornwall College in Camborne. (The personal connection most certainly did not mean that the college tie-up with Map was a done deal before it happened, she says wearily, responding to internet gossip.)

Mrs Mathieson’s early career was as a specialist English teacher and she worked in several schools in the Duchy before becoming principal of Treviglas Community College in Newquay, her previous job before Map.

Treviglas has the coastline in common with the St Budeaux school, plus the philosophy of making the location an asset to learning. Mrs Mathieson set up the country’s first surf ‘academy’ there. This helped improve attendance rates and engagement: pupils interested in a career in the surfing industry can achieve the equivalent of three A Levels and study at the University of Plymouth to be sure of a place on the city campus’s internationally renowned surf science degree.

Treviglas became the only 11-18 secondary school in Cornwall rated ‘outstanding’ — the highest level — by the official inspection body, Ofsted.

The Newquay school enjoys an intake of children with a wealthier than average background, at least as indicated by the low level of free school meal entitlement. But there are pockets of deprivation, which makes another Treviglas achievement under Mrs Mathieson’s leadership remarkable: for several years in succession every pupil that has left the school has gone into education, employment or training.

Tackling the problem of the going nowhere, drifting generation — the Neets, those not in education, training or employment — is seen as key in breaking the cycle of under-achievement, low aspiration, depressed income and social deprivation which is entrenched in some communities.

So why leave such a successful, high-achieving school late in her career with retirement on the horizon, for a secondary?

“For the challenge and the opportunities that can develop at Marine Academy Plymouth,” sounds like another standard response, at least in the first part.

But seen in the context of a personal tragedy which hit Mrs Mathieson 18 months ago, the ‘challenge’ response is straight from the heart.

The brief details of the life shock emerge as she talks about her two sons.

The younger, Simon, is an army doctor, currently based in Derriford Hospital, and is training to be a GP in the Forces.

Older son Neil, a vet in Northern Ireland, died last year at the age of 30, leaving a wife and two daughters. The cause was sudden adult death syndrome — a death without warning or apparent symptoms.

Mrs Mathieson, who has a habit of looking to the side when answering a question, focuses unflinchingly on me. “He was so talented, so wonderful,” she says. “It was just dreadful.

“Neil’s death was one reason why I applied for the Marine Academy job. I needed a new challenge. I was at that point in my life.”

Her focus on the task in hand at Map is similarly unvarying.

She and the trust which oversees the academy have set a bold target.

“Within three years we plan to have no ‘Neets’ leaving the school,” she says. Currently about 10 per cent of leavers have nothing to go to.

“It will be tough to raise aspirations. But we have got to be optimistic.”

Treviglas has had no Neets leave since 2007. She says: “It takes an awful lot of monitoring and a great deal of time mentoring students, using one-to-one tuition, to give them the opportunity to try different pathways.”

The new marine academy will be using similar methods to tackle the problem of Neets and raise achievement generally, she says.

Mrs Mathieson is confident, though, that the school is already going in the right direction. She points to the number of pupils achieving five A* to C grades at GCSE, including English and maths, passing the 30 per cent mark for the first time this summer. That’s a big improve on 2009’s 23 per cent, but still way behind the citywide average of about 50 per cent.

In fact Tamarside is still marred by having received one of the worst-ever Ofsted reports in Devon.

But that damning verdict was a distant 15 years ago. In fact the most recent inspectors’ report, in 2007, rated the school overall ‘good’ with some outstanding features.

Here, then, is a school that was in the National Challenge programme for schools with low exam results but has been steadily on the up for years.

That helps explain some of the difficult start the academy switch has faced. Controversy surrounded the Tamarside project after headteacher Keith Ballance and chairman of governors Jeff Edwards resigned in February. Mr Ballance had applied unsuccessfully for the Map job and a petition was launched by pupils — 600 people signed up to a Save Mr Ballance Facebook page. In contrast, Peter Grainger, the head of John Kitto, was appointed to be principal of the new All Saints academy.

So a string of awkward questions presents. There is the matter of the Ballance loyalty factor and, potentially, resentment at Mrs Mathieson’s appointment.

Plus there is the matter of how much a name change, new administration and leadership can really make a difference.

Research by respected educational academic Professor Ron Glatter suggests that simply turning a school into an academy is unlikely to transform pupils’ achievement.

The deputy director of the Institute of Education at the University of London says that when a school improves after its status is changed, the benefits are due to outside factors such as intake differences of better funding.

Map will not have a new intake, nor will it have — for now — a rebuilt school or a surge in funding: Mrs Mathieson is waiting for the final budget details but the indication is that ‘it will not be substantially more’.

The Ballance loyalty factor first. “I’d rather not talk about that,” she concedes.

“Tamarside is a proud school with a proud tradition. I completely respect that.

“With any new appointment there is the need to demonstrate to staff and to parents that you are completely committed. I will work hard to ensure that.”

She pays tribute, too, to the wonderful atmosphere and history of continuing improvements, and the ‘terrific’ students that she has met.

Not being able to demonstrate ‘transformational change’ with a rebuild is a disappointment, she says, “but we have to remain optimistic and positive”. The Buildings Schools for the Future programme is technically still under discussion for academies such as Map which are in transition, she points out, hoping for good news after that the Government’s spending review this autumn.

“There is a great need here for a replacement to the original 1930s building and for the leaking and unsuitable 1980s extension,” she says. “We have made a statement, though, by widening and transforming the entrance.”

And there is the sponsors’ vision which is key to delivering transformational education.

“Marine Academy Plymouth has unique and unrivalled resources to call upon for the benefit of its students and the wider learning community,” she says.

“The university is fast becoming the education and training champion for Plymouth marine and maritime industries, a key priority sector in the city’s roadmap for ‘new economy’ development and its Faculty of Education is a hub for excellence in the training of teachers. Cornwall College, as one of the largest further education colleges in the country, has a well-established reputation for excellence in a wide range of vocational and academic subjects,” she says.

“Its links with business partnerships and enterprise education initiatives together with its ownership of Falmouth Marine School allow it to make a significant contribution.”

Changes such as the new curriculum and an extended school day show progress.

And freedom of control over the budget has allowed the shifting of resources so that seven additional full-time teachers have been recruited.

One immediate change will be apparent for the 1,100 pupils.

“They chose their own uniform,” Mrs Mathieson says, “and I was amazed — and delighted — that they chose a traditional blazer, collar and tie.”

The pupils, then, have a clear view: they are enthusiastic subscribers to the Marine Academy Plymouth vision.