school desk:

Staff across three colleges to be offered voluntary redundancy

The federated body of Carisbrooke College, Medina College and the VI Form College have announced today that they’ve introduced a voluntary redundancy scheme, “in order to maintain a balanced budget”.

Chair of Governors, Terence Hart said,

“Our aim as a federated body is to ensure that Carisbrooke College, Medina College and the VI Form Campus build on their existing progress and achieve ‘Good’ and eventually ‘Outstanding’ Ofsted judgements. This would put them on a par with the best schools nationally.

“In order to do this and create high quality teaching and learning for all our students, we have to face some difficult decisions. With the support of the Trustees, Governing Body, Local Authority, guidance from Ofsted, and the dedication of our two Head Teachers and their staff, we are determined to make the federation financially sustainable by balancing the budget available to us.

“This will secure a basis for growth and development whilst continuing to offer the most appropriate curriculum pathways for our students. As part of this plan, we have today launched a voluntary redundancy programme.”

Carisbrooke College
Carisbrooke College was placed in Special Measures in April 2013. It’s latest inspection found the school to be making improvements.

Peter Shaw, Head Teacher for Carisbrooke College said,

“Like many other public organisations, a comprehensive review of all aspects of the Carisbrooke College budget has been underway for some time now; this obviously needs to include staffing and our logical first step is to explore whether some voluntary redundancies are possible in the first instance. This will not distract us in any way from our primary goal of removing Carisbrooke from special measures as soon as possible.”

Medina College
Medina College received a ‘requires improvement’ rating from Ofsted in March 2013, but just a few months later received praise from the head of Ofsted for the steps taken to make improvements.

Nathan Thomas, Head Teacher for Medina College said,

“In order to maintain a balanced budget in the next financial year, we are reviewing our staffing structure. In the first instance we are talking to support staff to explore the possibility of voluntary redundancies. Our key priority has always been and will continue to be, to provide a system that underpins the raising of attainment and ensures all our students are safe and well supported.”

Article edit: Headline changed from ‘Teachers’ to ‘Staff’ to include teaching and support staff.

Image: alamosbasement under CC BY 2.0