Published at 16:01, Wednesday, 23 July 2008

FINAL AWARDS: The 50th anniversary and last Ehenside school presentation evening marking pupils achievement over the year took place at the school on July 10. The winners are seen here with head, Janet Simpson (centre), after the awards ceremony

WITH THE ending, last week, of the school summer term comes the closure of both Ehenside and Wyndham Schools, on August 31.

But they are each closing on a high note: Ehenside is now out of so-called special measures and Wyndham can be proud of the result of its Ofsted inspection, early in July. Both outcomes owe a great deal to the dedication of the staff of the two schools and the leadership of the executive head, Janet Simpson.

Most staff at the two schools will transfer to the West Lakes Academy, when it opens on September 1, in the existing Wyndham School buildings. Wyndham’s Ofsted inspection will provide a helpful and challenging baseline from which the academy must progress.

Over the next few years the challenge for the academy will be to prepare its students for life in a very different world to that in which most of us grew up. As the annual report of Cumbria’s director of public health puts it, the commercialisation of sex; the ready availability of alcohol and other drugs; the weakening of family structures; and the advent of pop culture as a global phenomenon have coincided with changes in opportunities for teenagers to take on adult roles and responsibilities as the age of full-time education is extended into the 20s.

He could have added the impact of new technology which knows no national or international barriers.

They are also coinciding with a major but as yet little understood, economic and political shift in the world’s centre of gravity to the east. This shift can be seen in increased global demand for fuel and food, manifesting itself in rising fuel and food bills here in West Cumbria, as elsewhere in the UK. India is the world’s largest democracy with a huge skilled workforce. China educates one fifth of the world’s population and will build 22 new nuclear power stations by 2020. Population projections show Copeland having 3,700 fewer young people under 19 years old in 20 years’ time

The new academy cannot ignore these shifts and must prepare its students for their lives in this uncertain world of the future. The ‘job for life’ has gone and low-skilled work has already largely disappeared. Students of the Academy will need skills for this global world – learning opportunities that provide high-level skills which meet not only their needs but also those of the local and wider economy.

Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk