Simon, teachers can only perform well if given the support and the environment to perform. Are teachers under-performing if they spend hours marking books each week, planning lessons, running revision classes and extra - curricular activities?
If a heart is so diseased that the person can not be saved does this mean that the surgeon is under - performing?

Are the Trustees supporting the present management - even with the awful results? Why isn't Ofsted going into these academies which are in the bottom two hundred in the country?
A root and branch clear out of all management is needed to give the children a fresh start with Heads who have real educational experience. Surely the Governors and Trustees have some responsibility for allowing things to get to this stage.

Many Poor performing teachers at both academies in carlisle. im suprised not one third are being laid off.

I agree with whataboutthekids having a chief executive an an additional Headteacher salary equates to about at least 12 teachers.How can this be justified?
Surely the Head's position should be open to fair competition through the TES.

Michael Gove must be so proud.

How are public resources allocated in education?
The more I read about inequality and the undeserving rich, the more it seems to me that some of the scroungers at the top of society, whose families have sponged off the rest of us for generations, couldn't even make a living as ordinary benefit fraudsters.

Perhaps the News and Star could give us comparison figures of the number of staff employed by LEA schools of similar size? To me, 300 staff (if 50 staff = one sixth of the total) looks an incredibly high number for 1800 pupils. I see that £4.9 Million of additional public funds has been gifted to Richard Rose - over £2700 per pupil. Yet results in 'real' subjects are dismal, its finances are in disarray and only the enforced reduction in admission numbers at other (LEA) schools in Carlisle ensures a supply of new pupils. And nobody seems to know what would happen were the Academy to go bankrupt, or to fail its Ofsted inspection. No LEA school would be allowed to operate in this way, but Academies appear to be immune from the financial and academic regulations because of the political determination to make them a success. If Richard Rose is a success, I hate to imagine failure.

am sure the CEO on his massive salary will be safe and the PAs on their big salaries will be ok too.

Yet another blow to the hard working staff who have remained loyal to the Academies through turbulent times. It will be interesting to see how many of the many senior managers will lose their jobs. I hear that they kept their jobs in the redundancies last year whereas teachers and much needed low paid support staff (the front-line) lost their jobs. Also, when will the position of the Head teacher be advertised nationally to allow experienced Heads to apply? According to your article it seems to have already been decided.