Dear Editor
As a teacher of a local school, which has recently merged with another school. I am writing to express my alarm and concern at Durham County Councils plans of merging Greenfield School with Sunnydale Community College.
My first concern is that in the last Ofsted report, Sunnydale was rated as “inadequate and said to have serious weaknesses”, where as Greenfield was rated as “Good”. A school can be classed as inadequate for a number of reasons, one being a poor standard of teaching.  My concern is what will happen to the inadequate teachers situated at Sunnydale? Will they move to Greenfield in order to learn from ‘better teachers’ or will the ‘better teachers’ from Greenfield move to Sunnydale?  Either way, surely this will have an effect on the standard of teaching in Greenfield?!
Secondly, as I have experienced personally, the merging of two schools is NOT all it is ‘cracked up to be’.  If Mr Preistley is to be executive head of both schools, his eye will be taken off the ball at Greenfield School – It’s only natural as he will focus his attentions on trying to drag Sunnydale from the gutter.  If staff are to be ‘shared’ amongst both sites, this will lead to a ‘them and us’ mentality, where (if results don’t reach expectations) staff will blame the one another.
This is a personal concern to me as, my child is about to enter year 6 and my family and I have a big decision to make on the next step in their education.  The merger could help persuede me to look at other options for their future education!
Name & address supplied