Grace Academy creating a brighter future for Solihull

Jul 8 2008 Agenda

Improving the educational opportunities for young people lies at the heart of a £1.8 billion project to transform deprived areas of Solihull. Kate Ankers, a teacher at the Grace Academy explains why it appealed to her.

Chelmsley Wood had something of a reputation when I was growing up. It might have been apocryphal, but it was the estate where taxis refused to go. I certainly never envisaged I would end up working and living there – and loving every minute of it.

When I qualified as a teacher three years ago, my partner and I were living in a one-bedroomed flat in Sheldon and I was looking for work at schools on that side of the city. It was not a decision I was going to take lightly.

I’ve always wanted to be a teacher but the year gaining my professional qualification was nothing if not an eye opener to the infrastructure and resource issues facing some schools as we went on various placements.

I didn’t want to start my career in a dilapidated building and counting every paper clip, so when I saw an advert for a new school having opened in Chelmsley Wood I thought it was worth taking a look. As soon as I drove up to the Grace Academy I knew that if I was offered a job, I would take it.

Whichever way you look at it, the Grace Academy is a fantastic facility. It is clean and bright, well designed and resourced and is committed to engendering an ethos of respect and achievement with everybody who passes through its doors.

For me it has been my dream job. I was looking for a school where I could make some kind of difference to the children I was teaching and I have found that at the Grace Academy.

There is no doubt that Chelmsley Wood can be a tough area, but it is bursting with potential.

The fact that the school is over-subscribed two-to-one is testament not only to the school’s success, but also the aspirations of the parents of Chelmsley Wood.

In fact, the longer I worked and spent time in Chelmsley Wood, the more I realised that it was actually somewhere worth putting down some roots. As well as the fantastic people, Chelmsley Wood is one of the three wards that make up the area covered by Regenerating North Solihull and it is undergoing something of a transformation.

As part of the regeneration project, the area will see the replacement of thousands of 1960s houses and flats, as well as the development of new amenities like GP surgeries and community centres around shops and offices. Chelmsley Wood town centre is also undergoing a multi-million pound facelift.

But the most dramatic change will come in education. As well as the Grace Academy and the new Solihull College campus in Smith’s Wood, which have both recently opened, the area will see the replacement of every primary school as part of the 15-year Regenerating North Solihull project, while Solihull Council is managing the Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme to rebuild the area’s secondary schools – music to the ears of somebody who has just become a mother.

In the end it was a no-brainer and we traded in our one-bedroomed flat in Sheldon for a semi-detached in Chelmsley Wood. It’s shared ownership with a local housing association and I feel like we have found somewhere that feels very much like home. I’ve lived in various places around greater Birmingham over the past few years and this is undoubtedly the best.

It is amazing how quickly you get a real affinity for a place when you live and work there. Whereas one day I wouldn’t have driven through Chelmsley Wood, now I am inspired by the place and what the future holds for it.

What makes the transformation of Chelmsley Wood and the rest of North Solihull so important is not just all the nice new buildings – as welcome as they will be – but what it will do for the people of the area, especially the children.

As fond as I am of Chelmsley Wood, I am not blind to its problems and for every story of ambition and hope, there is a story of poverty and neglect.

In the few years that I have been living and teaching in North Solihull I have experienced the full range of emotions when dealing with its young people from unbridled joy and satisfaction to jarring exasperation.

As a teacher it is my job to espouse the virtues of education and try and impress on the young people under my charge the benefits of participation in school and participation in life in general as citizens of planet Earth. This isn’t always that easy. By the time children reach secondary school age they are already forming their own opinions about life and you will do well to change them.

What this significant investment in the basic infrastructure of life – houses, schools, shops, community facilities – will do is create a more optimistic environment for young people to thrive and help create more positive opinions about life and their futures.

As challenging as young people can occasionally be in areas like Chelmsley Wood, what I have discovered is that when you scratch the surface they really care, even if they are not all the greatest communicators.

As part of National Enterprise Week we looked at the regeneration project in my English class and I have rarely seen the children so enthused.

This project affects them now in terms of what will happen to their homes, and in the future, as it is they who will need the jobs created by the project and it is their children who will enjoy the educational facilities.

But they also care about what is going to happen to the green space in the area, the shops, the graffiti – in short they care about this place they call home.

These children are the future of Chelmsley Wood and the future for Chelmsley Wood couldn’t be looking any brighter. I just can’t wait to be a part of it.