Stradbroke Business & Enterprise College

VISIT FROM DR. DANIEL POULTER MP

Last week on ‘trips day’, while most of the school were out and about in France or Valencia or Bury, Dr Daniel Poulter, MP for our area, took time out of his busy schedule to come and look at our Art exhibition.

Before actually looking at the Art he spoke to Mrs Phillips and me about his new life as an MP and his party’s policies on small schools. Even though I haven’t really had any interest in politics throughout my life I found what he told us very interesting because it would affect us, hopefully in a good way, as he seemed very protective of the excellent schools he has in his constituency. He said he felt lucky to have one of the best constituencies in the country for education because it has such outstanding schools, like ours which is on a list of the top two hundred schools in the country!

We asked him about Academies, as it has been in the news lately that the Conservative party has rolled out the initiative throughout the whole country so any school can apply to become an Academy. I didn’t really know what it would mean for a normal state school to become an Academy, he told me that it meant that the school would become more independent so it could choose where to put it’s money rather than being told what to spend it on, and it would not be controlled by the County Council so it would have much more freedom.

After a lot of politics talk, we showed him around the exhibition and he could barely believe that such a high level of Artwork had come from GCSE students. He said that he had been forced to take Art at GCSE and was rubbish. Before Daniel left, he told Mr Bloom that he would love to come back to the school when there were a few more students around, to talk to us all in assembly. So hopefully we will all be seeing him soon.

Isobel Arnold
Head Girl