Crisis school on road to recovery with radio

"YOU know, we refused to work with that place when it was on two sites," the taxi driver tells me.

"Apparently a member of staff got pushed down the stairs and really hurt her leg.

"It was just too dangerous."

The cabbie isn't talking about a high-security prison, but a secondary school in Thurrock, Essex.

Before moving into its brand new £38 million building in June last year, The Gateway Academy was in crisis.

Academies are one of the Government's strategies for tackling poor results and deprivation, and The Gateway is the result of a merger of two of the county's toughest schools - St Chads and Torrells.

Academies are outside of local authority control, instead receiving their funding directly from the Government and a business sponsor.

In this case the Ormiston Trust, a children's charity, contributes to the school every year.

Before becoming an academy, the lessons were shared between the two old buildings, it was known as the Gateway Community College, and chaos reigned.

More than a third of the staff were supply teachers who changed from one week to the next.

GCSE results hit rock bottom, with just 13 per cent achieving five A* - C grades including English and maths, and the pupils' behaviour was appalling.

English teacher Megan Koprash worked across the two sites before the academy was established.

She said: "I used to have kids jumping out of the windows in my class and there were problems with fights and racism.

"The corridors were damp and dark and covered with gum and graffiti.

"The students had no respect for each other or the staff, and you could see that from the surroundings.

"I was on the verge of quitting, but things have improved 100 per cent since we moved here.

"I can't tell you how much better it is."

Gone are the cramped corridors, virtually unchanged since the old school was built in the 1920s.

Instead there is a gleaming steel, glass and brick construction in the shape of a 'G'.

This is a state-of-the-art school where even the desks are like something from Star Trek.

There's a Synergy school radio station, a theatre and instead of a scruffy playground students can sit and chat in a landscaped courtyard, complete with patio seating and table tennis tables.

There's no teachers table in the canteen, instead kids pull up a chair next to staff, and everyone dutifully clears their plate away at the end of the meal.

Watching classes is one thing, but no matter how much money has been spent on computers or radio stations it still takes nerves of steel to keep control of 30 chatty, boisterous teenagers.

"Why don't you have a go?," asks Rachel.

She whisks me off to Miss Koprash's year seven English class, and suddenly I find myself standing in front of a room full of twelve-year-olds, all clutching plastic bottles and staring at me.

"We're making up our own potions and learning about persuasive language for the labels," Megan tells me, simultaneously running the class from her laptop via an interactive whiteboard.

"Why don't you tell us what you know about persuasive words?"

I try my best to give some examples but when I see their attention levels wandering the kids start to chat and giggle.

It takes Megan's considerable skills to calm them down again and get them on track, and after just 15 minutes I'm exhausted at the amount of energy it takes just to keep the class on side.

However, when one of students learns my colleague has met both Brad Pitt and Robert de Niro potions are forgotten and we're bombarded with questions about celebrities.

"They're good kids here," says Rachel.

"But this area is very deprived, and levels of literacy in the community are much lower than the national average.

"The pupils typically have very low aspirations, but we're trying our best to show them what's really out there."

And the approach seems to be working.

This year they're hoping to more than double the GCSE pass rate to 34 per cent, which would lift the academy out of National Challenge School status.

Rachel tells me: "We've a long way to go but this new building has really transformed the lives of the pupils and the teachers.

"It's given the students something of their own to build on and respect, and it's shown them we believe they can succeed."