School 'in breach of funding agreement' after failing to enter pupils for GCSEs
Inspectors have stated that a school's recent failure to enter pupils into exams was a breach of the statutory requirements and the school’s own funding agreement.
The Route 39 Academy in Bideford, Devon, a free school, failed to enter any Year 11 pupils into end-of-year examinations in what inspectors called an ‘unreasonable and unorthodox’ step.
The school said its students were “neither academically ready nor sufficiently mature or resilient” to take GCSEs, according to an Ofsted inspection.
The free school has 138 pupils on its roll and had a two-day analysis on June 21 and 22 this year. The inspectors’ report concluded the school was failing on all four criteria it measures.
The school ‘strongly refutes’ the judgment of the inspection which deemed the school inadequate and placed it into special measures.
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