Marlowe Academy in Trouble Again? and a ramble

Reading The Guardian yesterday http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/16/academies-special-measures-apprenticeships I noticed this article, which says:

"In December, we reported on the Marlowe Academy in Ramsgate, in Thanet, Kent, one of the worst-performing secondary schools in the country, which, after failing to make significant improvements on its GCSE results, had effectively been taken over by the Academies Education Trust (AET), which sponsors 14 schools in England.

A headteacher at the time said that since the government had announced it was raising floor targets (the minimum standard of attainment), academy chains were eyeing up failing schools, hoping to take advantage of their misfortune.

But, despite parachuting in a new head and deputy head, it seems the AET is yet to make its mark on the academy. After a recent Ofsted inspection, the school has been placed in special measures, the Guardian has learned.

A spokesperson for the AET said they would not be able to comment until the report had been published by Ofsted."

Well to be honest I was following up on John Worrows post about the difficulties encountered by gay teenagers, which like so many of his posts is now deleted, so I was googling away trying to work out what the problems are for the youf locally.

The picture is of a Chatham House School production, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/08/chatham-house-ramsgate-school.html

I find it a bit strange that The Marlowe Academy has mopped up so much public money and still appears to failing the youf of today. It started out as Conyngham School when it opened in 1963, named after The Marquess of Conyngham, hope I spelt all that OK, there were unfortunate associations with the C word when it came to hurling insults, although I doubt that is why the name was changed to The Ramsgate School. Now however rebuilt as The Marlowe Academy one wonders will they change the name again.

 As you see from the picture the young Christopher Marlowe could easily have played a girl in the school play once the facial fungus had been removed. Christopher didn’t make it to thirty as he was stabbed to death not long after being arrested, probably for heresy. The arrest not the stabbing I mean, perhaps that is why he was stabbed too.  


To quote Marlowe himself “while the boy, naive and unaware of Greek love practices, said that, "You are deceiv'd, I am no woman” 


Anyway while I was contemplating the likelihood of homophobia being greater of lesser among the pupils of a school named after Marlowe, who must hold the accolade of being one of the stately homos of England. I came across this rather disturbing article about the way we are failing our youth here in Thanet yet again. 


Bit of a fragmented post today with the bookshop being busier than usual, an interesting addition to the Ramsgate business for sale here http://www.primelocation.com/uk-property-for-sale/details/id/TEPA2409687/  

Back to John Worrow’s blog and before I go further I think it would be apposite for me to produce some sort of joke relating to him and homosexuality.

This one relates to you having the right screen size and browser, assuming you have the right conditions and you have opened his website you should have a tab reading John Worrow – Your Camp.  

Ok it wasn’t that funny, but it was only to prove the point that there is a difference between humour and homophobia, even when that humour is linked to a person’s sexual preferences.

John’s latest post http://worrowsworld.blogspot.com/2012/01/fair-play-statement.html seems to be saying that Simon Moores isn’t homophobic and James, I assume he means James Maskell isn’t a bigot.

I won't bother to comment there as the post and all of its comments will probably vanish like the two previous ones about, teenage homophobia and homophobia in the Church of England, both of these subjects interest me and I would have commented on the posts, had I not expected them to be deleted.     

I will start with The Church of England and tackling homophobia.  

I would guess that the church as a whole are in a difficult position on this one, I think there is a genuine desire to change attitudes and a complex biblical and doctrinal history going back a very long time to overcome.

I would reckon that the Church of England is making more progress on this and other discrimination issues than most, and most of the other world religions don’t really seem to have started on the issue.

With the female clergy issue a lot of people have left the Church of England for other churches where they don’t have any female clergy. 

One wonders just where this will all go, I suppose απελουσασθε απελουσασθε means therefore Εδικαιωθητε (St Paul’s own words) as a non practicing homosexual better have a look at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-gay-churchman-and-an-unholy-row-6290223.html if you don’t know what I am talking about, and the Greek is 1 Corinthians 6:11.

On to the victimisation of gay youth although staying for a moment with the theme of males in dresses, more of the photos from the Chatham House productions here http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/chathamhouse/ a consideration being how one works out, at an age where it is difficult to tell what sex some people are, who it is one is attracted to and what ones orientation is, I do wonder if gay youth have a category that is separate from youth.

Anyway having read John’s post I spent an edifying evening looking at some of the Stonewall statistics, after which I had a look at some of the surveys from outside the gay community, frankly as far as I can see, things are bad in teenage word of sexuality in the UK. 

See http://www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic-violence-press-information.asp?itemid=1783&itemTitle=Women%92s+Aid+launches+teenage+domestic+violence+campaign+with+Bliss+magazine&section=0001000100150001&sectionTitle=Press+releases and http://www.nspcc.org.uk/news-and-views/media-centre/press-releases/2009/09-09-01-teen-girls-abused-by-boyfriends/09-09-01_teen_girls_abused_by_boyfriends_warns_NSPCC_wdn75755.html

I would say that one way and another something has gone badly wrong with our society. 

Oh well here’s one of the pictures I took today.

   Three threes plus four fours is the same as five fives.

Thanet School's GESE Exam League Tables Out Today, Marlowe Academy at the bottom Clarendon House at the top

Here are the results for 5 or more A to Cs
Charles Dickens Broadstairs 28%
Chatham House Ramsgate 94%
Clarendon House Ramsgate 97%
Dane Court Broadstairs 97%
Ellington and Hereson Ramsgate 32%
Hartsdown Tech College Margate 43%
King Ethelbert Birchington 34%
Marlowe Academy Ramsgate 14%
St George's Broadstairs 41%
St Lawrence College Ramsgate 75%
Ursuline College Westgate-on-Sea 57%

I will ramble on about this if I get time, starting at the top, with the picture, are they boys or girls, there has been an inconclusive debate about this see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/08/chatham-house-ramsgate-school.html

Apart from my own experience of schools, none of them in Thanet and finished more than forty years ago, I have employed several Saturday workers at the same time as they were receiving their education in various Thanet schools, my two oldest children have now completed their school education and between them have attended three of the Thanet secondary schools.

Now the way the secondary education system has run in this country for the past twenty odd years that I have had the bookshop in Ramsgate and my older children have been through the school system here, seems to have been at least partly based on the academic snobbery of past prime ministers, Tony Blair and John Major.

Fundamental to our education system has been a move towards prioritising academic achievement, something that is fine for the children who have academic ability, but not so good for those who haven’t.

An aside to this is the British educational tradition that means that academic specialisation starts much earlier than in most other countries.

The present system seems to have weaknesses both with dealing with disruptive children who don’t want to work and children who have practical rather than academic skills, who used to go through the secondary modern and apprenticeship system.

In Kent because of the selective school system, operating in an environment where secondary modern schools no longer exist, this produces two separate groups of schools trying to achieve the same ends, the best results at GCSE.

Socialist political solutions to this problem seem to be mainly to disband the only really successful schools i.e. the grammar schools, the present governments solutions seem to be leaning towards more independently run schools, but seem to fail to address the problems too.

Whether you get a good education or a bad one, what is certain for most people is that this education will be one of the most expensive things that you buy in life, the fact that it is compulsory and paying for it is effectively a proportion of your life’s income doesn’t alter this fact.

Another side issue here is proliferation of non-jobs and associated education to degree level and beyond.

Simon Moores has also posted about this issue, see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/01/local-school-league-tables-2010.html which has lead to me to the BBC page http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/education/school_tables/secondary/10/html/886.stm which shows progress statistics as well as exam results.

What about the Marlowe Academy with the third worst results according to the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-12173698 are these figures indicative of failure?

They have certainly both thrown money at it and changed the name since it started life as Conyngham School in 1963, it cost about £140,000 then about £2,000,000 at today’s value.

Conyngham School was perceived as a failing so it was Changed to Ramsgate School, this in tern was perceived as failing so they knocked it down and rebuilt it - at colossal expense – and renamed it the Marlowe Academy. I am not sure if this was after Christopher Marlowe was son of a shoemaker in Canterbury who became a playwright or Philip Marlowe of the arguably better dialogue. Nothing to do with Ramsgate either of them though.

Fraid I thought something was wrong at the end of last year when pupils of the higher scoring Ramsgate schools managed to hack the internet announcing that they were closed, as a potential employer looking for high IT skills I noticed the Marlowe pupils hadn’t managed to pull this one off.

Sorry about beating about the bush here, I suppose as someone who failed the 11 plus myself I don’t really want to face the unpalatable question, did the huge 86% of the Marlowe Academy’s pupils who failed the basic standards do so because they are all stupid? Or did we, adults, society, teachers, whatever you will, fail them in some way?

Chatham House Ramsgate School Entertainment Pictures

I managed to borrow these to scan in and will probably do some sort of booklet so they get preserved permanently, I don’t now anything about the pictures as there is no text with them.

Going by the hairstyles I would guess that the pictures date from around 1970.Are they all picture of boys do you think, or are some of the girls real girls?Click on the link for the rest of the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/chathamhouse/

Anyway please any information so I have some text for the book would be helpful.

CHATHAM HOUSE COLLEGE RAMSGATE 1797-1917

I have just published another article from Don Long’s book Occasional Ramsgate Writings click here to read it.

Pictures of Chatham House Ramsgate

I am pretty sure that these are Chatham House pupils and that the other picture click here was taken during WW1 when the building was used as a Canadian hospital.

Ramsgate’s schools

WW1 bomb damage at Chatham House School

Ramsgate’s schools are back in the local papers again this week, the problem being that there is money available for rebuilding schools and some of our politicians want to use it to further their own particular brand of political idealism.

There are all sorts quirky aspects like most of the Labor politicians involved being grammar school educated, or one of the Labor politicians teaching in one of the grammar schools, or some of the Conservatives wanting to maintain single sex status for the grammar schools but get rid of it in the non grammar schools.

Now most of the ordinary people I speak to every day want to maintain the status quo as we have good and improving schools in Ramsgate and they don’t want them either unsexed or ungrammared.
I have tried to group together all of the opinions I can find in one place click here to read them.

Ramsgate’s schools political football or cricket?

Out of all the Ramsgate issues that concern me at the moment that of our secondary schools pretty much tops the bill.



picture Chatham House First Eleven 1894





There is a rumour that some of our politicians would like to make changes to Chatham House, Clarendon, Hereson, Ellington and Marlow schools.

The rumours are that they would like to end grammar school, and single sex status for those that have it, and move them all to a school cluster at Pysons Road.

In view of all this I will email them and ask them if they would like to tell us about their ideas here.

I should add that it is my intention that this blog should be totally non-partisan I am myself a floating voter, without party ties.



picture Hereson School Football Team, 1950