Who We Are
St Ivo Parents Forum currently has nearly 500 members.
The Forum is open to any parents or carers of St Ivo School and any parents or carers of children in feeder primary schools.
What We Do
We seek to be a positive influence on St Ivo School.
We organise meetings for parents to meet together, support each other and learn more about St Ivo.
We have a representative on the school’s Parent Advisory Council (PAC).
We often host someone to speak with us about secondary education in the town. We’ve hosted MP Ben Obese-Jecty, Teachers’ Unions, and spoken with St Ives Town Council.
We run an up-to-date newsletter for parents to stay in touch and hear what’s happening. If you’re a parent or carer of a student. Click here to join.
We also host a Facebook Group for parents and people from the community who want to support the School. Join here.
How It Began
Due to growing concerns about how Astrea Trust is running St Ivo Academy, Cambridgeshire, around 100 parents and carers of those students came together on 8th February 2023. The aim of this first meeting was to bring those concerns to the fore and start to build a pathway that helps our children and teachers enjoy their learning and teaching, in a safe and happy environment.
The main concerns were:
- The behaviour and uniform policy and their implementation
- The recent curriculum and GCSE changes announced by Astrea (Jan 23)
- The negative, mental-health impact the atmosphere at St Ivo Academy is having on students and teachers
Parents that night were keen to make a difference and set up St Ivo Parents Forum to be a positive force for good
In the first two weeks the membership of the Forum grew exponentially and we set up 8 working groups which members can join to be a positive influence for good in the School
What did we do?
After commissioning a parent survey of over 400 parents, we realised that Astrea were failing children, and teachers, at the school.
We lodged a Formal Complaint on 20th February 2023 with Astrea because over 100 parents had tried to raise their own complaints and did not receive a satisfactory response or even a response at all.
Astrea dismissed our complaint had reached formal status and questioned whether they could accept a complaint from an organisation. Outside of their policy, they offered us an informal meeting on 6th March 2023 with Astrea CEO Rowena Hackwood and Astrea Regional Director Jo Myhill-Johnson, but told us they would make only minor tweaks to the GCSE offering that they wouldn’t guarantee for the subsequent year.
They categorically refused to change their approach to behaviour in the school and that, in their consideration, it had been light touch up to January 2023.
St Ivo Parents Forum felt that the meeting was unsatisfactory and have had no written response from Astrea since that meeting. We attended that meeting with evidence to support that they had knowledge of the points we were raising but, in the meeting, they denied any awareness of these matters.
On 10th March 2023 the Forum followed up with a resubmission of our complaint to a formal status, on 17th March 2023 Astrea responded to dismiss our complaint without addressing any of the concerns raised within it.
Here are a fraction of the concerns from our survey…
➡️ 71% of parents (315 surveyed) say their children have had a period of time without a regular teacher, or without a specialist teacher (and 18% say they don’t know whether they have or not). There are many comments about ineffective supply teaching.
➡️ 60% of parents (315 surveyed) say their children have had communal classes in the hall (and 26% say they don’t know whether they have or not). Many parents noted that the school has not made them aware of these arrangements. They also mention that their children can’t ask for help. More than one mentioned ‘babysitting’.
➡️ 63% of respondents (199 parents) say Astrea policies and the way they are being implemented are having a negative effect on their child’s mental health and wellbeing. Only 9 out of 315 parents say these policies and their implementation are having a positive effect on their child’s mental health and wellbeing.
➡️ Over half of respondents (57% of 315 surveyed) have had concerns about their child’s mental health and/or wellbeing. Of these, 61 respondents (19%) say their child has missed school sessions because of mental health or wellbeing issues. 81 have accessed or tried to access mental health support for their child – that’s 26% of all respondents.
This is what some of our parents said…
✳️“Sunday nights are particularly awful for his anxiety, affecting his sleep, which then has a knock on effect. He suffered with ticks as a toddler and these have returned due to the stress. He loves learning and particularly enjoyed the online learning when the staff were on strike, so we know it is not the school work that is the issue.”
✳️ “Our child doesn’t think there is any point in school. They’ve gone from a fun loving infant to a depressed, introverted, low self-esteem, self-neglecting individual.”
✳️ “I have never experienced him not wanting to go to school as much as he has since joining the Ivo. He worries a lot and makes me double check his bag for homework, equipment, pe kit etc as he’s so terrified of getting in trouble if he accidentally forgets something. As I said in a previous comment some of them are literally living in fear”
✳️ “My eldest has suffered immense anxiety at the Ivo, massively affecting her attendance… They [my other child] have also repeatedly been denied access to use the toilet when essential and can only be excused by saying they feels sick…”
✳️ “We are having to put my yr 9 daughter through external counselling for her anxiety and depression brought on, I feel, by the Draconian punishment system introduced by the school. She has such an unhealthy fear of getting things wrong or making a mistake that it causes her to burst into tears in her lessons which then leads to her peers talking about her which then exasperates her anxiety. She
spends way too long on her homework, re-doing it again and again if she makes a mistake. She is a hard-working student but she absolutely hates school and it breaks our hearts dropping her off each morning. She is not thriving at the school which she is so capable of doing. The change in options has been the icing on the cake or the nail in the coffin and is absolutely penalising those students who
are creative.”
✳️ “My child is reluctant to go to school most days. He says it’s boring, that good children are punished unfairly and St Ivo is ‘a bad school.’”
✳️ “The system has also caused significant stress, especially for our year 7 who checks his bag repeatedly every evening and morning in case he’s forgotten equipment. His mental health has deteriorated. Our Year 10 did the same when the current policy was brought in but has since lost such reapect [sic] for the school that she no longer cares. Neither have ever been in trouble. The threat impacts already well behaved children negatively.”
✳️ “…the military culture being imposed on students (and staff in my opinion) to comply with the trust’s draconian rules is a massive cause for concern and has led to my child going from a bubbly, confident child, to a self-conscious, anxious student, terrified of getting a detention for missing a pen or not tucking his shirt in!”
Some of our children said…
✳️ “Recently, educational posters have been removed from all around the school. This has completely abolished the character of the school and has created the idea that conforming behaviour is more important than education. For example, in the computing department, posters concerning inspirational women in computing have been replaced with grammatically incorrect posters displaying; “100% walk with pace and purpose”. In a subject which is (and always has been) largely dominated by males, the encouragement for young girls in the field has been completely removed.”
✳️ “I don’t feel comfortable to put my hand up in class in case I get a detention because the sanctions are very severe…The term SLANT feels like a dog command and is extremely annoying. Morning address feels like you are in a disciplinary camp and very tedious.”
✳️ “I’m really unhappy at the moment with the current situation regarding GCSE choices, as feel it is totally unfair that we lose an option. The school lunchtimes as I feel they aren’t long enough. I also don’t agree with having to have a toilet pass to go to the toilet in lessons as some teachers don’t always understand the urgency. I also feel like the teachers aren’t fully allowed to teach in the way they would like to as they have to follow certain methods such as using the white board or pre-prepared PowerPoints. The toilets are also in a really bad state and are always unclean or broken.”
What are our aims now?
✅ We want a restorative and relational approach to behaviour in the school. The harsh culture Astrea has brought in at St Ivo is impacting our children’s mental health. We know all schools have problems with bullying and we absolutely want our children to be safe and protected, but these punitive strategies that punish minor misdemeanours with the same severity as serious incidents, are ineffective.
✅ We want a broad and rich curriculum that includes creative and practical subjects in the way they have always been available to St Ives students. St Ivo is the only school in the town and narrowing the curriculum leaves many children without the exposure to an aspirational curriculum.
✅ We do not want children herded into communal lessons of 2 or 3 classes, facilitated by an out-of-subject teacher. We do not want booklet learning to be the norm. We want teachers to be able to use their discretion in the classroom to teach the curriculum as the experts they are.
✅ For the benefit of our children, we hope for radical change in St Ivo Academy, whether that is by change in Astrea, or a change of academy trust for St Ivo.
St Ivo Parents Forum 