Foundation secures £12.7million for Portslade Academy

The Aldridge Foundation has welcomed the decision by the Secretary of State to commit £12.7million of funding to enable the Foundation and Brighton and Hove City Council to develop the proposed new Academy for Portslade.

The Academy would replace the existing Portslade Community College, with The Aldridge Foundation as the lead sponsor, Brighton and Hove City Council as co-sponsor and the University of Sussex as education partner. 

The final decision to move ahead with the plans will be taken by Brighton and Hove’s Cabinet shortly.

The new Academy would cater for 1200 11-16 year olds, and new sixth form provision at Chalky Road will provide courses for 250 students. 

Aldridge Foundation Director, Honor Wilson Fletcher, said: “Everyone has worked hard to reach this stage, and we have big ambitions for the new Academy. We will put teaching entrepreneurial attributes at the heart of what we do, and we want our students to be passionate and creative, to have a mindset that solves problems and seizes opportunities.”

The Academy will open on the site of the Portslade Community College which it would replace in September 2011 and will follow the admissions policy set by the local authority. 

The Foundation has already confirmed that the first choice for Principal will be the Portslade head, Stuart McLaughlin. 

Rod Aldridge, the Foundation Chairman, is a former pupil of the Portslade Community College, and said it was a huge privilege to be able to put something back into the local community, and that he wanted to see significant improvements to education standards over the long term.