It has been a busy week for Northumberland County Council’s Cabinet Member with responsibility for Education, Guy Renner-Thompson. With A level and T Level results released last week, and GCSE, BTEC and results out this week, many young people in Northumberland have been rightly celebrating. Guy has written to congratulate those young people, as well as the many teachers and support staff who made success possible:
Congratulations to everyone who received their GCSE, BTEC, and A-level results over the last two weeks and thank you to hardworking teachers, support staff and parents for helping these make it possible.
Working out the next stages in life can be daunting, which is why the County Council’s Careers Guidance Team stands ready to support our young people find opportunities they are looking for.
It’s a long-standing priority for Northumberland Conservatives that no young person should have to leave their home county to get the training and skills they need to move forward in life. That is why we have transformed the Northumberland Skills service to offer more vocational courses, apprenticeships, and employability programs than ever before. We have invested in physical facilities too, with new campuses in Seghill, Prudhoe, Alnwick, and Blyth.
We have supported our partners too, with Northumberland College one of 16 colleges across England that has been selected to work with the Department for Education as part of this Conservative government’s £1.5 billion Further Education Capital Transformation fund.
The new facilities will include an advanced, state-of-the-art digital academy and a new health simulation ward at Ashington, a bespoke and newly constructed equine centre, a specialist animal management centre and veterinary nursing centre at Kirkley Hall and a brand new modern campus building at the existing Berwick site.
There are over 45,000 school pupils in Northumberland and we want to make sure our school are the best they can be. And that is what we have been doing. Since 2017 our schools have shot up the league tables and now 94% are graded ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ by OFSTED. That’s better than Newcastle, Gateshead and Durham. Its far better than the position we inherited from Labour when only 76% of schools were Good. And 97% of our children get into their first choice school, meaning this excellence in education is open to all.
All of this is testament to the hard work and dedication of our school leaders, staff, pupils, parents and carers – supported by our school improvement team and the wider Children's Services team. As the portfolio holder for Inspiring Young People on the County Council, I could not be prouder of them all.
