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A former "sink school" where 90 per cent of teenagers failed to achieve good GCSEs was today named the best in the country.
Harris City Academy in Crystal Palace is the first in England to receive a perfect Ofsted score under the Government's tough new inspection regime.
The school now attracts 2,000 applications for only 180 places every year and is seen as a template for success in state education.
But 18 years ago it was a very different place. Few parents wanted to send their children to the school, then called Sylvan High School. It was taken over by Carpetright boss Lord Harris of Peckham in 1991.
On a typical day at the old school, four out of 10 students were absent, while 60 were expelled for bad behaviour every year.
Now, however, the Harris Academy is the first to receive the top grade of "outstanding" in all 30 Ofsted categories. Some of the pupils at the ethnically-diverse school are from the poorest families in London and do not speak English at home.
The inspectors praised the school's work ethic and strict discipline and pupils' strong moral values.
"Harris City Academy Crystal Palace is an outstanding school that not only helps its students to achieve exceptionally high standards but also to be well prepared for the next stage of their life," Ofsted said.
Dan Moynihan, chief executive of the Harris Federation, and a former head at the school, said teachers were "delighted" with the report. The academy is being used as the template for Lord Harris's nine other schools in London, he said.
Many of the features that made the academy so successful are deeply traditional, such as blazers replacing jumpers, and a house system.
"We have a strong uniform policy. That's the base for everything," Dr Moynihan said. "If the uniform is right we think everything else will be right. We encourage competition, which the students enjoy."
The school under-headteacher Steven Kenning pushes pupils to achieve two grades more than they would be expected to score aged 16. By tracking children's progress from week to week, teachers can tell if pupils fall behind.
Harriet Fan, 17, from Beckenham, has been at the school since it changed from being one of the Tories' city technology colleges to become one of New Labour's academies. "Physically we changed," she said. "We went from quite a casual jumper to a smart blazer. Now we all look very professional and it gets you in the mindset of work."
She said Lord Harris himself was often to be seen on site and was a great supporter of the pupils' achievements. "He's such a lovely guy," she said. "He is always coming to check up on us."
Fellow sixth-former Bertrand Augustin, also 17, from Thornton Heath, joined the school a year ago and found staff and students "very welcoming".
"Sometimes when children get left, their standards slip. But they never leave me. My head is really clear about what I want to do," he said.
Reader views (8)
I have recently started to attend Harris CTC Sixth form and i have found from the very start the pupils and teachers to be very welcoming to new pupils and very sociable in terms of helping students improve academically.
- Harris Sixth Form Student, Croydon
I left here in 1990. The last couple of years there were dire because pretty much all the teachers disagreed the CTC and left!
- Julie, London
I was also a student at Harris from year 7 right until sixth form, & during that time the school changed dramatically. It is a place where if you are an academic student, you will excel just like I did and so did many of my friends. But be warned, this green route/yellow route thing is true, and I have seen it stigmatise talented people to the point where a flood of students in my year group left to go to the Brits school to be encouraged for their creative abilities, because if you're not good at Maths, English or Science, expectations are to just 'do what you can to pass' - keep the stats up, you know.
Unfortunately, it cannot be denied that Harris is a statistic obsessed institution, which helps get the results, but unlike what the new authorities/teaching staff in the school would like you to believe, Harris was a brilliant school way before they came onto the scene (when we wore jumpers and not blazers)and other than championing the somewhat dodgy idea of academies (*cough* privatisation of schools)I felt the atmosphere change so much, likening a business space, rather than a place full of energetic young people.
A lot of the good teachers with traditional teaching styles coincidentally left when the school changed, and I began to see a stream of young, textbook, career teachers emerge.
In the same breath, if we look around at other schools in the Croydon borough, the fight to get your child into Harris is a worthwhile one - but by no means is this school perfect.
- Nadine, Crystal Palace
Since 2001 I have had four children attend Harris Crystal Palace. All have achieved excellent results.
All four sat the entrance tests to secure a place at the school and all four have been on the Harris Yellow Route so I have never experienced the learning on the Green Route system however, from my point of view its been excellent.
They enjoy going into school and 'yes it is very strict with some would say far too much homework' but they have 100% attendance and have never stay home even when they are sick. Harris taught them to be respectable well adjusted individuals who I am sure will go on to have very successful futures. I can honestly say that I am proud of my children's achievements and I am proud to have sent my children to Harris City Academy.
My only real complaint about the school if I had one is their lack of interaction with the parents. They can be at times cold toward the parents.
I am sure that there will be many people with a much different view to mine regarding this school but I cannot say enough good words about it.
- Harris Parent, London
I attended Harris Academy CP for seven years and only left 2 years ago. As a secondary school I have to be honest it was fantastic for me. I achieved high GCSE grades and enjoyed every moment of my Harris life between year 7-11.
However, there are some issues that need to be recognised. Halfway through year 9 the students are split into 'green' and 'yellow' route. This split is based on academic ability. Yellow route (the one I was in) is for the brightest pupils while Green route students are labeled as less able. This divide is damaging on pupils for many reasons such as late development and being surrounded by more disruptive pupils. It is commonly known within the student body that this split symbolises more than a simple divide and in fact becomes friendship groups and to a certain extent a sign of future prospects.
Also personal expression is an idea that Harris has forgotten to celebrate and many of Harris’ more creative students leave to study elsewhere. Students are encouraged to conform instead of being individuals. In addition I’d like to point out the fact that there is a feeling that Harris is now a business instead of a school and students are often seen as statistics. And one final point is that the parent/teacher relationship is practically non existent within the school. Parents have little access to their children’s school life.
So while the school deserves all the praise it receives it is far away from being the perfect school.
- Kenny, Sydenham, London
I went to this secondary school and left two years ago after GCSE's, the year when it became an academy. When I was there the strict uniform policies that the school started to insist upon were very opposed by the people in our year-people felt that it was irrelevant to academic success. I have heard a lot of people say that the atmosphere in the school has changed for the worst-a school is a school, not a business where children are hothoused to get the statistics looking good. The fact that the previous head quoted in the article, Daniel Moynihan, has moved on from being the head of this individual school to controlling the whole group is part of a more general policy to move teachers on to the other schools, rather than to keep them and create the school atmosphere which has been building for nearly 19 years now.
I remember a staff member saying that the conversion to being an academy was essentially worthless and just a government policy to make their academies system look good, in echange for funding. The school had been the top state school in Croydon for a long time before this. The success of Harris was due to the hard work of the skilled teachers that worked there, not the uniform changes.
I chose to move on from this school because it has no provision for the best students, who simply get on with it. For example, the school has got almost no-one into Oxbridge, because no energy is spent on anything past GCSE statistics.
- A_Q, Bromley, London
Porky Pies I think you have totally missed the point, the point is that the school has been reformed.
It shows that success breeds success, hence 2000 applications.
Whether it is the best school in the country is another matter but it's obvious that is a successful school.
- Keith, West London
Oftsed gives extra points for schools being "ethnically diverse". This is bias and racist towards schools with a majority white population / low ethic population. What has the colour of skin of the pupil have to do with earning points? This is positive discrimination at its worst and the ultra left enforcing their agenda upon us. Imagine if schools got extra points for ethnically white, there would be upoar?
- Porky Pies, New Addington, Croydon
