Tears for Peers?

For as parents, pupils, old headteachers and former staff gathered at Peers School last Friday to bid farewell to the secondary school, on the face of it, the reason for its decline seem painfully obvious.

After 40 years Peers had been examined and found wanting in the modern education era. The time had come to pull it down, change the name and start again.

Plans to close the secondary school in Sandy Lane West, Littlemore, and replace it with a new academy - Oxford's first - have been put in place with clinical speed and efficiency.

Virtually nothing of Peers will survive, beyond the memories of the tens of thousands who spent much of their young lives there.

The 500 guests at the school were determined to celebrate the school's history and achievements over four decades, for any school's story is ultimately the history of the children who were educated there.

But Peers, its pupils and staff have certainly seen their fair share of highs and lows.

Only last summer 16-year-old Euan Allen returned home from holiday to learn he had achieved ten A grades at GCSE, as well as a B and a C for good measure, one of the best results by a pupil there in recent memory.

But for every Euan Allen celebrating success, there have surely been many more with good cause to regret lost opportunities.

So savaged was it in a 2005 Ofsted report that it became Oxford's only secondary school to go into 'specials measures'.

It was to come out of special measures early last year. But along with three other schools in Oxfordshire, it has fallen short of the Government benchmark of 30 per cent of pupils achieving five A* to C grades at GCSE, including English and maths.

The transformation of Peers from a vibrant place of education to a failed school is an educational tragedy that has unfolded just a couple of miles down the road from arguably the world's most celebrated seat of learning.

The reasons for its decline are intrinsically linked to the peculiarities of Oxford's social make-up - with areas of affluence and pockets of deprivation separated by only the width of a ring road.

But its past, just like its future, has also been fundamentally shaped by the shifts in government policy.

And if that is not all complicated enough, Peers, in any case, was always something of a law unto itself.

From its very beginning it was a bit different.

The event at Peers last weekend was also to mark the unveiling of a new book telling the history of the school, written by Martin Roberts, entitled Peers School: A Comprehensive with a Difference 1968-2008.

Mr Roberts is a man with a deep knowledge of education in Oxford - he was for 22 years the head of Cherwell School in North Oxford.

He was invited to write it because his book on his own school had impressed the Peers governors.

Mr Roberts is also known to have worked closely with former Peers heads during turbulent times in secondary education in Oxford.

It will come as a surprise to some to find that Peers was regarded as one of the most successful schools in Oxfordshire during the 1970s and 1980s, when it enjoyed a national reputation.

"In 1968, when all the other Oxford schools were run by the city council, Peers was a county school," explained Mr Roberts.

"It was the first Oxford school to abolish uniform. It performed Russian opera. It won national awards for its curriculum and had a school restaurant with gourmet standards.

"It attracted the famous, such as Bishop Tutu and Tony Blair, and it pioneered pupil exchanges with African schools."

However, when it subsequently performed badly, it was also to do so to an unusual degree.

The school was created through the 'merger' of two very different Oxfordshire schools - Northfield Secondary School and Littlemore Grammar School. It took its name from Jack Peers, a gentleman farmer from the aristocratic Peers family, which had owned land in Oxfordshire since the 18th century.

Mr Peers had become a county councillor in 1952, chairing the education committee from 1956 to 1967.

A warm supporter of Labour's abolition of secondary modern and grammar schools, Mr Peers became the school's first chairman of governors.

Many believe the defining moment in the fortunes of Peers School came when in 1982, when the county council closed Redefield School, in Blackbird Leys, held to be the ultimate sink school.

Already a school with a large intake from disadvantaged housing in Rose Hill, Peers found itself having to cater from an increasing proportion of equally disadvantaged youngsters from Blackbird Leys.

Brian Derbyshire, who was appointed head of Peers in 1974 and was one of the five former heads to attend last Friday's event, recalled: "The school was sited near two large council estates, between which, it seemed, a 'Hundred Years War' was in its infancy.

"Rose Hill and Blackbird Leys generated fierce lunchtime battles on our school field. We felt like UN peacekeepers.

"Racial tensions between these two communities were often stretched to breaking point and there were one or two of the staff who would have left the battles to rage unhindered.

"Over the years, however, at least within the school itself, tolerance and understanding appeared to prevail."

Tim Brighouse, viewed by Mr Roberts as one of the most inspirational educationalists of his generation, recalls arriving in Oxfordshire in 1978 to become chief education officer.

He remembers: "I received unequivocal advice from the ruling Conservative group - 'send your children to independent schools'. When it later transpired that we had bought a house in Iffley and were sending our eldest to Peers, their reaction was even more direct - 'you must be mad'."

Another former head, Chris Dark, believes the scrapping of middle schools in the controversial reorganisation of Oxford schools, proved the straw that broke the camel's back.

There was a vast increase in numbers, and despite costly new buildings, the site became overcrowded and behaviour deteriorated.

Mr Dark recalled: "In September 2003, nearly 700 students joined Peers in a space of three days. The initial impact was overwhelming. So many new and younger pupils behaved counter to the culture of the school. Many had acute levels of need.

"I had underestimated the impact of so a large number of new pupils. Peers began to lose students from a broader range of social class that had previously been a feature of the school."

Farmer Charles Peers, who was to succeed his father as chairman of Peers governors, does not pull his punches in assessing what went wrong.

"It is a shame that a school delivering what Peers did for the youngsters in the area has been, in my opinion, let down by authority and politicians."

Former head Lorna Caldicott, who left in December after being rejected as principal designate of the new academy, well remembers being asked during her Peers interview: "How will you bring the magic back?"

But her most pressing task was to get the school out of special measures and try to get some pride back.

Before that goal was achieved, however, the Anglican Diocese of Oxford had approached the Department of Education to sponsor a new academy on the Peers site.

Last year Peers governors and local councillors committed themselves to supporting a new academy with the prospect of new buildings and extra-curricular activities.

The opposition was easily swept aside, with Education Minister Lord Adonis, once an Oxford city councillor, taking a personal interest in the proposal.

So, academy status will come in this September, although new buildings will not be ready to 2010.

Mr Roberts says his task had been to write a book to keep the memory of the school alive.

"It has been a melancholy story," he told me. "In my view it was a really good school, which, for reasons unrelated to the people in the school, fell on hard times."

Glancing down at his book, my eyes alight on what Charles Peers sees as the great unanswered question: "Why is it that when Peers was great, Oxfordshire led the country in education?"

No doubt about it, wherever your children are educated, everyone has good cause to wish the new Oxford Academy well.