Deepings School to offer more courses and improve recruitment after 10 pupils signed up for sixth form this year

A headteacher has described a decision to cancel the sixth form intake just days before the new school term as ‘heartbreaking’.

The Deepings School, which is run by the Anthem Schools Trust, had to scrap its Year 12 intake for the 2024/25 school year after just 10 pupils signed up.

Headteacher Kirstie Johnson said that they could not have given pupils more notice because enrolment had not begun until the day after the GCSE results were released on Thursday, August, 22. Parents were contacted the following Friday (August 30).

“Sixth form education has been at the core of what I’ve done for so many years, so it was quite heartbreaking,” said Mrs Johnson, who was head at Melton Vale Sixth Form College, in Melton Mowbray, before moving to the Deepings last year.

“When you can offer that education from 11 all the way through to 18, to have to make that decision was really sad on the day.

“We offered all 10 of our students a very personalised approach.

“Although it was a very difficult conversation to hear initially, once the surprise - and shock for some of them - had worn off, we ensured they all secured places with other local providers in line with what their pathway was going to be.”

The school is now reviewing its range of sixth-form courses and aims to improve recruitment among Year 10 and 11 pupils and their parents.

A repeat next summer would leave the school without any sixth form pupils at all next year.

“We’re really determined to have sixth form provision at the school - that’s our absolute intention,” Mrs Johnson said.

“We will be offering a broad range of A-level subjects for students to tap into and we’ll also be looking at offering some applied A-level courses as well.

“The children of Market Deeping and surrounding areas should be defaulting to coming through to our sixth form for their academic post-16 choices.”

She added: “We had potentially a promising year group of students and we’d done a lot of nice induction activities, but when it came to it, on the Friday we only had 10 students who had committed officially to studying with us in Year 12.

“At that point it became clear that it just wasn’t viable. The different combinations that those children had chosen meant that you could have had a class of one or a class of two.”

Mrs Johnson said numbers had also been down in 2023, but this year almost three-quarters of its Year 11 had opted to take vocational courses at nearby colleges.

“We would have expected quite a few more,” she said.

“I was so perplexed at the numbers that I actually rang an organisation to see what the national picture was.

“Typically you would have 60 or 70 per cent of your children being able to come through to your school sixth form, and over half of our students could have joined us in the sixth form, but 70 per cent of them chose to take a vocational route.

“We have Peterborough College and Stamford College on our doorsteps and they offer so many courses that a school sixth form can’t, and that was definitely where our students were leaning towards.

“Some were going for the new T-levels, which schools don’t offer.”

Matt Watling, associate director of secondary education for the Anthem Schools Trust, said it followed a national pattern of pupils setting their sights on the workplace.

“We’re finding in our post 16 provision that students aren’t opting for the number of university courses that they used to, and that’s happening nationally,” he said.

“A lot more of our young people have moved on to apprenticeships, for example.

“The more vocational route is becoming much more accessible and popular for a lot of young people.”

Mrs Johnson also believed the disruption caused by national lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 could have played a part.

“We are getting to the final year groups that were affected by covid,” she said.

“They would have been Year 7 when covid hit this particular year group and there’s no doubt that their first three years of secondary education were really disrupted.”

The school was rated as ‘requires improvement’ in its most recent Oftsed inspection after a difficult few years which has seen changes of leadership and staffing, and an occasionally rocky relationship with some parents.

But Mrs Johnson said she was proud of the new teachers brought in and that the school had become more stable, backed up by improved exam results.

“I’ve been on site for 18 months and actually there’s a trust that’s now developed and we’re starting to see some really positive responses from parents,” she said.

“Our children are very happy here, but it’s that perception in the community, and we know that we need to do a little bit more to win hearts and minds, but we are turning the corner there.

“There is a real desire to have an excellent school in the Deepings.”

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