This section will introduce the schools, both primary and secondary, in and around Ravenswood. It should be noted that I did not decide which schools should or should not be mentioned, for instance based on a radius around Ravenswood. Instead, I was guided by which schools research participants mentioned and considered important in Ravenswood’s schooling provision. The location of all these schools is marked on Figures 1 and 2.
6.3.1 Primary schools
Figure 1 shows the locations of all the primary schools mentioned by research participants during this study. The closest primary school is situated within Ravenswood itself and is called Ravenswood Community Primary School. This school is based on the development, in a central position, and was built as part of the new community. It was opened in 2001. However, despite the name, Ravenswood Community Primary School, its teaching staff and many of the initial pupils came from a nearby school which was closed down. This school, Priory Heath Primary School, was situated in Priory Heath on the other side of Nacton Road, in a small inter-war building, adjacent to the closest secondary school, Holywells High (see Figure 1). Due to its limited size and need for extensive repairs it was decided that the school would be closed down and all staff and pupils would be moved to a new building on Ravenswood. This move also provided the opportunity to take on new pupils from the Ravenswood development, whilst retaining its existing catchment area, enabling the school to grow. Furthermore, as the Head Teacher, Mrs Blake, outlined, moving the school to a new area where there was potentially going to be a very different socio-economic intake was to be both an opportunity and challenge for the school. The school was seen to be essential in helping to integrate children already living in the area with new children moving into Ravenswood. It was for this reason that they made the decision to change the name at the same time as the move, so that new Ravenswood residents would feel that the school belonged to them. At the time of the fieldwork Ravenswood Primary School had approximately 450 pupils (Ofsted, 2013 [online]). From the empirical data gathered from various different sources, it became clear that Ravenswood Community Primary School suffered from both a poor school reputation and image, which was further backed up by a ‘satisfactory’ rating from Ofsted acquired prior to this research commencing (ibid.). These, along with other issues will be discussed later in the chapter.
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The next closest primary school to Ravenswood is Piper’s Vale Primary School. This is located to the east of Ravenswood in the Gainsborough estate and therefore much of the school’s intake comes from the surrounding local authority housing in Gainsborough. In many ways, including both size and intake, Pipers Vale and Ravenswood primary schools are very similar, although Pipers Vale received a ‘good’ rating from Ofsted in 2008 (Ofsted, 2013 [online]).
To the south west of Ravenswood in a village called Nacton is a small village school called Nacton Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School. In 2009 the school had 83 pupils and was therefore much smaller that either Ravenswood or Piper’s Vale primary schools. As a result of its size, at the time of the empirical fieldwork it was considered to be over- subscribed. In contrast to Ravenswood’s school, Nacton Village Primary School appeared to have a very favourable reputation and image, supported through an ‘outstanding’ rating in 2008 from Ofsted (2013 [online]).
Finally, the fourth primary school mentioned during the course of the research, was St Mary’s Catholic Primary School which is located a few miles from Ravenswood in Ipswich town centre. At the time of the empirical work, the school had an intake of approximately 215 pupils and in 2006 received a ‘good’ rating from Ofsted (2013 [online]).
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6.3.2 Secondary schools
The locations of all secondary schools mentioned throughout this research study are shown on Figure 2. The closest secondary school to Ravenswood is situated on the other side of Nacton Road. At the time of the fieldwork, this school was called Holywells High. However, since then, in March 2011, the school has become an academy and is now called Ipswich Academy. The change to the school followed a long period of poor pupil performance. In 2001 Holywells High School was placed under special measures until 2004, and despite improvement recognised by Ofsted did not shake off its poor school reputation and image. Both of these issues are examined in more detail later on in this chapter. Despite the recent name change to Ipswich Academy, I will refer to this school as Holywells High School throughout this chapter and thesis.
As well as Holywells High School, other nearby secondary schools to Ravenswood include Coppleston High School, Kesgrave High School and Northgate High School. Coppleston High School, along with Northgate High School, are both located several miles from Ravenswood towards the north-east of Ipswich town centre. Kesgrave High School is located a few miles north of Ravenswood in a suburban area of Ipswich called Kesgrave. All three of these other secondary schools are of similar sizes, and had a larger number of pupils registered in 2009 than Holywells High School. Furthermore all three of these schools maintain a generally good school image and reputation, although in varying degrees. Northgate was rated as ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, whilst Coppleston and Kesgrave High schools both received ‘good’ ratings (Ofsted, 2013 [online]). Again, these issues will be discussed later on in Section 6.5 of this chapter.
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Figure 2: The location of Secondary Schools (map adapted from Google maps)