Stacey Rimmer used to be a typical West Denton pupil.
She regularly truanted and mucked about in class. Today the 17-year-old has eight good GCSEs to her name and is considering university.
“We never did any work in class. I thought that I may as well do nothing at home rather than nothing in class,” she said.
But all this changed, she said, when All Saints college opened in September 2002 in a new building on the site.
“We got lots of new teachers who made us re-do the coursework we had done in the previous year because it was not good enough,” she said. At first she was outraged. But later was convinced. “We had to work hard in class and this was not something we had ever done before,” she said.
“And we could no longer go outside and had to eat with the teachers, so there was hardly any fighting, bullying or messing around in school.
Everything seemed to change.”
This term she is taking AS-levels in biology, media studies and performing arts. And she has been so impressed with the work of teachers, she is considering teaching as a career.
