Surrounded by low-rise, post-war housing in a nondescript suburb of Bristol, Bristol Brunel academy's looming landmark modernist architecture has enormous impact. A three-storey, stainless steel monster, with an enormous entrance fit for giants, to welcome visitors marks the city's first Building Schools for the Future project, designed to embody its pupils' pride and re-engagement with learning. Instead of noisy corridors at break times you see groups of students on their way to lessons, walking briskly through the building's central atrium, which looks like a space-age shopping mall. Or climbing the steel walkways that soar towards the upper two storeys — reminiscent of Escher's optical illusions or the staircases at Hogwarts — where maths and sciences and arts and humanities are grouped. Fronting on to the street, open-plan study areas are packed with flatscreen PCs like tables at a Starbucks coffee bar.
Executive principal David Carter stoops to pick up a piece of litter. "This is a completely fresh start in an ICT-rich new school. Along with the new name, pupils have a new uniform — jackets and ties — and there is a new discipline code supported by a department of 10 learning activity coordinators and year group mentors whose job it is to challenge behaviour and support individualised learning plans."
Until 18 months ago Carter was head of nearby John Cabot, a high-performing city academy sponsored by Rolls-Royce. Carter agreed to take on both schools and John Cabot entered into a federation with 1,180-pupil Bristol Brunel under a unified governing body and with city academy status and a beefed-up senior management team. "John Cabot is in effect educational sponsor to a new city academy," says Carter. "I'm responsible for introducing a new ethos and culture and for closing the 50% gap between John Cabot, which gets 85% A* to C at GCSE, and Bristol Brunel, still technically a failing school. I aim to increase the new school's results by 20% in the first year and incrementally thereafter."
A downside was that plans for academy status were drawn up after the build process was begun and too late to influence the design of ICT facilities. Carter shrugs: "There were things which, if we'd had an early input, we would have done differently — such as the layout of ICT rooms. But heads of department are now fully involved and it's working."
For starters, the PFI consortium under construction group Skanska is bringing in a managed ICT provision by partner Northgate, a firm which has provided managed IT to schools in Northern Ireland for the last three years. Northgate will provide staff training and is pioneering the use of Fronter, a managed learning environment (MLE) that will link Bristol Brunel with John Cabot and other Bristol schools.
Carter's strategy for raising results is to switch to personalised, project-based learning for years 7 and 8, supported by ICT, to ease transition from primary, and to teach in year groups. Next, Carter is parachuting in members of the John Cabot senior management team one by one to shake up departments. Head of technology Nathan Jenkins says: "I rationalised eight BTecs and GCSEs down to product design, catering and engineering. And I've been helping staff set up the new computer- aided design and manufacture (Cad-Cam) enabled classrooms. The school has teamed up with a new business sponsor – a laser-etching company. It's easy to bring business into school when you have a state-of-the-art environment like this. They know you're serious."
Pupils, too, know the new academy is serious about its educational mission and they feel more optimistic about their choices and their prospects.
"There are a lot more facilities and it's more open," says year 11 student Rosie Gauge. Classmate Chris Holbourn adds: "It's not crowded and you can always find a computer to do your work on. I'm staying on into the sixth form to study sports psychology at A-level."
Still in its first year, Bristol Brunel only goes up to year 11, but from next year it will open a small sixth form for pupils wanting to stay on. The decision could place a future strain on the new school's resources as the building has been planned with existing numbers in mind.
"When it was a failing school the roll was declining but, since we opened, word has got around the community and we are now oversubscribed," says Carter. "At the moment any parent putting down Bristol Brunel as a second choice to John Cabot is guaranteed a place."
