Thomas Deacon Academy

Hello again,

As with some other people who will probably read this blog at some point, but in the morning we all went to the Thomas Deacon Academy, a £42,000,000 school that was set up in Peterborough, and it is run exactly how a school should be run.

You can pretty much see the entire Academy from as soon as you walk in, and it's an incredible building; three floors of curving walls with glass panelled classrooms and a web of ariel walkways taking you around your classes, it feels small and big at the same time, it makes you feel tiny by the sheer size of it, but because you can see everything it manages to feel more connected, and ultimately, small. Their resources that they have available are massive, I.T suites with amazing equipment and the sports areas and fitness suite were all filled with fantastic equipment for student use, as well as (one of my favourite bits) they have their own theatre in the Academy, with fold out chairs, proper lighting, the works. The open top library where the only roof is, the roof, looks like such a great place to study and do all the work that goes on. I reccomend you try the virtual tour, it doesn't give you quite the measure of it but it gives you an idea of it's very interesting design.

But that costed 42 million pounds, and as far as I'm aware Swavesey Village College doesn't have the odd 42 million quid to spend on the school, otherwise I think it would be fairly improved. But the attitude within Thomas Deacon doesn't cost; it's simply a matter of enforcing it. The teachers are level with the students, and being treated like sophisticated, mature students means you tend to follow that example. Then there's the zero tolerance policy; any cases of vandalism or serious issues among students means exepellation, which is like the ASBO system. A fairly minor offence means people get let off and let off and let off all the time, as the people say 'well, you can't reaallllyyyy take them down for that' but it means they keep repeating. An ASBO, however, tells them that if they break it there is a serious consequence, which is a completely seperate offense. It's an excellent system. And the teachers monitor the students but aren't always telling them off.

The first step is the teachers, even on our way back, when we were talking about how well the attitude runs at TDA, Alex mentioned something, and Mrs Frampton started making him out like he was stupid and making a fuss. This does of course happen in everyday life, but if an adult acted like that to an adult or even an adult to a child in normal society, it is considered incredibly rude, which it is. But somehow, because she was a teacher, and Alex was a student, he had to be wrong. And it's a bit pathetic, so we need to break from the vicious cycle. But I think we will, with a bit of work.

Josh xx