Schools and colleges
The Authority maintains four nursery schools, 70 primary
schools, 13 secondary schools, one academy and four special
schools. There is also a college of further education, Hopwood
Hall, which has campuses in Rochdale and Middleton.
Hopwood Hall
Choosing a school
If you are considering which primary school your child might
attend, you will find helpful information in the tables about the
performance of schools in your area. But the tables provide only
part of the picture of each school's overall achievements.
You can find more information in school prospectuses or
governors' annual reports, by checking if there have been any
recent
Ofsted
inspections and,
of course, by visiting schools and talking to teachers.
If your child is nearing the end of their time at primary
school, you will probably want to look at the secondary school
performance tables to help you decide which school you would like
them to attend next.
Performance tables are available on the
DCSF web site.
New money for Primary School buildings – what do you
think?
The Borough’s primary schools will soon be getting a boost, with
new money from the government to improve buildings and facilities.
We will receive £10 million over two years from 2009-10, and we
expect that will be followed by further allocations every year
right up until 2023. The money won’t allow us to rebuild every
school, but the government wants us to use it to improve learning
environments and facilities at around half of our 69 primary
schools. We will be linking the extra cash to other funding
allocations so that we can make a real difference, rebuilding the
schools in the worst condition and improving conditions at
others.
This is a huge project for the Council spread over 14 years, and
it’s important we choose the right schools for investment. The
government wants us to target funding at schools in the most
deprived areas, to remove empty places where there are too many and
to improve facilities in schools for the wider community. The whole
aim of the project is to make sure our children have the best
possible environment in which to learn, so they can all reach their
full potential. In order to release the funding, we have to submit
a document to the government called the ‘Primary Strategy for
Change’. This will include an assessment of where we are now, what
we think we could do better, and what we hope to achieve by
investing the cash available.
We are asking all primary school Headteachers, governors and
parents for their views before we finalise the Strategy. It’s
quite a long document, but it covers all of the areas that the
government has asked us to address and explains what we think is
the best way to prioritise the schools for work. Because there are
so many areas to cover, we want to use a simple ‘traffic light’
system to pinpoint which schools we should invest in first. So, for
example, a school in the most deprived area of the Borough with
poor quality buildings, lots of empty spaces and a lack of decent
childcare facilities might get 4 red lights, which would indicate
that we could improve the buildings and, at the same time, use some
of the spare places for a new childcare setting.
We would like as many of you as possible to look at that and the
draft Strategy and give us your views. Do you think we are
concentrating on the right things? Have we missed anything that you
think we should include? Do you think this is the best way to
prioritise schools for investment or is there another way? You can
submit comments and these will be considered by the Council’s
Cabinet before we submit the document to the government.
We need to submit the document in the middle of June 2008 and we
need time for the Cabinet to consider your comments before
that. Please visit our consultation page and submit your
comments before Friday 25 April 2008.