| |
 Jo Shuter |
West End | News | Jo Shuter | National Teaching Awards | Quintin Kynaston | Pimlico School | Parents and pupils
Award-winning headteacher hits out at ‘hostility’ of staff and parents
JO Shuter, the headteacher of two schools in the borough, has spoken out against the teachers and parents campgaigning to keep Pimlico School comprehensive, accusing them of turning pupils against her.
Ms Shuter, the National Teaching Awards secondary headteacher of the year for her efforts at Quintin Kynaston in St John’s Wood and Pimlico School, has told of having to endure hostility from the staff- room and classrooms as she prepares to step down from the post when the school becomes an academy in September.
She said some parents had poisoned their children against her.
Ms Shuter also hit out at the teachers’ attempting to derail plans to turn the school into an academy, telling them to concentrate on doing their jobs.
“I knew it was a big, big job when I went in there, but I was not prepared for the hostility,” she said. “I was totally caught off-guard. I was cast as some sort of bureaucrat or puppet with a political agenda. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I did feel that a small minority of parents had indoctrinated their kids against me and, at times, my motives were questioned in the corridors.”
Staffroom rifts and outspoken teachers had a damaging effect on the quality of teaching, according to Ms Shuter.
“It has been very hard to manage the politics. The whole way through a small minority of parents and teachers were skewing the debate, at the expense of the school,” she added.
“For instance with the special music course, I truly believe the silent majority want these benefits for the whole school, not just 80 children. There is no doubt that the High Court case has had a negative effect on teaching. Too may people have been distracted by things they cannot control when they should have been concentrating on pupils.”
Ms Shuter has publicly denounced the academy model, and tried to forge an alliance between Pimlico and Quintin Kynaston in an unprecedented federation scheme. She said she would love to carry on at Pimlico but would not “choose to be head of an academy”.
She said: “When I went in there I promised myself I would not become emotionally attached but that has gone out of the window. I love the school, I love the teachers and I love the pupils. When I started it had all the problems of a failing school: bad behaviour, truancy, poor attainment and bullying.
“It has been hard work but we are starting to see real results which I bet will come out in the exam results this summer. I will be really sad to leave and am going to have to wrench myself away from the place.”
As Pimlico prepares to become an academy, sponsored and controlled by the venture capitalist John Nash and his charitable foundation Future, Quintin Kynaston is moving for foundation status to take control of its land, finances, staffing, curriculum and admissions, away from Westminster City Council.
It means that in September none of the nine secondary schools in Westminster will be under the council’s control.
Ms Shuter said it was a “common sense” move to get more children from the local area into QK. She said: “It doesn’t make children living two streets away not being able to get in because they’re in Camden. We want to serve the local community and we want more of a walk-to-school policy here.”
Until now schools chiefs in Westminster have blocked Quintin Kynaston from giving preference to pupils from Camden primaries.
|
 |
|
| |
| |
