Thomas Deacon Academy

Pros

The school is incredibly diverse with a large multi ethnic group of students and staff. The school day goes quickly because the end of the school day is 2:45. Some of the facilities are impressive... on first glance and then it’s obvious that they’re look better than they work/seem.

Cons

I wouldn’t recommend working here for the following reasons: - there is no break. All lessons are an hour long and the earliest break the students will get is during lesson 4. The students are not allowed to go to the toilet until lunch time, so this means that they could be working for 3 and 1/2 hours before they can visit the toilet or eat. - behaviour is shocking; especially for new staff. I was told that there weren’t any behaviour problems which I quickly realised was an out-and-out lie. The system in place is based on restorative justice which is fine in principle and provided that it’s executed well. It isn’t here. You lose some of your non contact time having these discussions and the outcome of these is not necessarily positive in the long run. - your PPA time is not formally timetabled. You are contracted to be in school until 4:15 from Monday to Thursday and because lessons finish at 2:45, the presumption is that the hour and half that is directed from 2:45 until 4:15 is PPA time. What you won’t be told is that you have to attend 2 x meetings a week and your are expected to run extra lessons for your exam classes. This means that you will essentially have no PPA time. It also means that there aren’t enough hours in the day to keep on top of your workload. - staff turnover is high which I think is an indication of an unhappy workplace. Many staff leave at the end of a year. There are opportunities to progress, but these positions are for those members of staff whose faces fit. - as a new member of staff, you will taken regularly for cover because your PPA times aren’t formally timetabled. - there is an obsession with the purple pen of progress. - the school is so big that it’s easy to feel isolated and unwelcome. - management is done by non-specialists and often departments are run by people who have no clue how a subject is examined or run ie Business Studies teachers running the Maths department (this is just an example). It just means that the middle layer of management is lacking in expertise. For the sake of your mental health, I would avoid this Academy as far as possible.