18-03-2025
Improved Gloucestershire school celebrates new 'good' rating
A school in Gloucester has received a "good" rating after years of work trying to turn its fortunes Greenshaw Learning Trust took over Gloucester Academy in 2020 which was in special measures after being rated "inadequate" in school, in Painswick Road, has tried a number of new approaches to incentivise children to behave well and can get points and tokens for contributing to lessons and for high attendance rates which they can then exchange for prizes.
"Honestly I'm all about the points," said Glenn, aged 12."I like getting badges, gold, silver [for doing things like] being polite to the teacher or participating in lessons."
Since the Covid pandemic attendance has been lower Gloucester Academy is encouraging more children to go to lessons by giving them a token each week for 100% attendance. Those tokens can then be exchanged for small prizes such as pens and games, or larger ones like book bags and water Hussen, 17, said the school was a vastly different place from when she left in 2024 to when she arrived in 2019."It was very chaotic actually, there were times where there were lots of disturbances in my lessons," Miss Hussen said."At the time people weren't equipped enough, but when Greenshaw joined we always had equipment and a good uniform."
Headteacher Phillipa Lewis likened studying at school to everyone "being on a mountain" and making sure everyone is "climbing together".According to the latest publicly available statistics the suspension rate was 15% in the autumn term of 2023/24."We take it really seriously if someone's left behind and left behind means I've suspended them - so it's a big decision," Mrs Lewis that would be grounds for suspension include causing disruption in class."I can't allow one child who's causing a problem to then take the whole lot down, sliding down the mountain."But despite the high rate, Mrs Lewis said that it had reduced and suspensions were used as sparsely as possible.
