DACA: About the School (School and Government Policy Impact)

After firstly researching the school independently and with the help of Louise I found out some things about DACA. Dawen for Aldridge Academy was a social experiment. It was about having not just a school but a social building for the deprived area of Darwen. It was about bringing Darwen together. Examples of this are the Entrepreneur pods. Small offices within the school that can be rented out for free to young people to start up their own business. Another example of this is the foyer which can be rented out for weddings and social events.This is a great thing for the academy and the society.

A wedding taking place at the Academy

 However in the school especially within the art sector its a different story in my opinion. Music, Dance, Art and Drama all work on an 8 week rota throughout key stage stage 3. An example of this is the year 7's; Art- Why is landscape painting still relevant in the world we live in? Dance- Contemporary dance based around the theme of natural disasters. Music-Making music of the environment e.g. garbage.

Although this sounds great it isn't working within the school.Pupils are only getting 8 weeks out of the year to learn each subject and so are not gaining substantial knowledge. When the pupils have turn over they have had different teachers so the quality of work is off and the teacher has to bring them up. So if Offstead come in and a good teacher has just had turnover and now has a class with poor quality of work they will be penalized when it wasn't them ho taught the work. Next year the school are scrapping the 8 week system in preference to three 50 minute lessons of different art subjects each week. This way the teachers will keep the same pupils throughout the year.

Another thing I found bizarre in DACA was that fact that a child does art in year 7,8,9 and 10 and even i this child wants to do art at A-level they have to stop for year 11. This is due to early entry a government policy that will be scraped next year. The children are made to do their Art exam in year 9 and 10. You can argue that it isn't fair that some kids around the county are 14 while others are 16 when taking their art GCSE. Also to make them stop Art so that they get their English and Maths I find slightly off putting as anyone who is creative knows that taking a year out and trying to get back into it would be extremely hard. Especially when other kids around the country who are also taking the same courses have had that year to refine their creative work.

I feel that once these government and school policies are scraped the school in terms of Art will run much more fluently. However that does put added pressure on the core subjects as now in DACA they have 2 years to try and get those GCSE's. Next year they will only have one shot at it, and DACA is an academy so to keep funding it needs to get the grades and reach its targets.