A Newcastle school which went from inadequate to outstanding in five years has won praise from a minister.
Schools minister Robin Walker visited Westgate Hill Primary Academy on Thursday as part of its World Book Day celebrations.
The Arthur’s Hill school, which has more than 600 pupils, has had a massive turnaround since being branded inadequate and placed into special measures by Ofsted in 2016.
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The school, which is now an academy and part of the Laidlaw Schools Trust, was given top marks by inspectors when they visited last October and Mr Walker said he had been “massively impressed”.
He said: “What has been really exciting to see is the way in which pupils and teachers are all very proud of their school and the facilities they have got, but more importantly they are proud of what they are learning and teaching.
“With World Book Day today, I didn’t have to wait to be told about it – the children wanted to tell me about books they were reading, what they were taking home from the amazing library they have here. Everywhere we have gone in the school, we have seen fantastic, aspirational displays around raising children’s sights, raising their aspirations, and encouraging a love of reading which I think is so important.”
Mr Walker said that the school had been able to change its culture and “rise to the challenge” of having a large cohort of children that mostly do not speak English as their first language.
His visit came in the week that research from Children North East and the national Child Poverty Action Group revealed the major difficulties families living in poverty face.
Their report highlighted the problems disadvantaged children face participating in activities like school trips, non-uniform days and World Book Day – as well as not having sufficient access to IT equipment, stationery and books.
Asked what the government would do to lower the 41.2% rate of child poverty in Newcastle, Mr Walker said it was important to “not accept a narrative that some parts of the country or city will be forever poor”.
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “The key thing we need to do is drive up wages, drive up employment, drive up the productivity that allows people to be able to be paid more and make sure we are relieving the burden on lower-paid households from taxation.”
He added: “Of course we have had a huge impact from the pandemic and I know it has affected different areas in different ways. One of the massive lodestones we are carrying at the minute is the recovery from that.
“But I think we need to make sure we are aspiring for a higher wage, higher-paid economy, one in which the taxation system is fair and the best off should bear their share of taxation, which is one of the reasons I have always supported raising the threshold on income tax so that people on low pay get to keep more of what they earn.
“We need to look at more interventions like that, keep increasing the Living Wage, and recognise when people need more support. If you look back 10 or 20 years, I think no government, not even Tony Blair’s Labour government, would have introduced support for families to have food and activities through the school holidays – we have done that.”
