Two outstanding ARK academies, King Solomon in Westminster and St Albans in Birmingham, were centre stage in a BBC Radio 4 programme, "Inside the Academy Revolution," made by The Guardian's Zoe Williams.
In the programme, Ms Williams heard how high expectations of every child, a culture of hard work and good behaviour all help to raise achievement dramatically. Parents, pupils and teachers said how much they valued their schools and how much they'd achieved.
At an event attended by 75 representatives of government and non-governmental partners, ARK marked the handover of our HIV care and treatment programme, which has improved the lives of more than 36,000 children.
"We are confident that ARK's impact will be felt for a long time, especially when we know that they are leaving better access, better quality and better care at lower cost for adults and children living with HIV/AIDS ," said Dr. António Assane, Mozambique's Director of National Medical Assistance.
Last week, ARK India Country Director Amitav Virmani co-hosted a private dinner in Delhi for UN Special Envoy (and former UK Prime Minister) Gordon Brown and Sarah Brown, Chair of the Executive Board of the Global Business Coalition (GBC) for Education.
ARK today announced the appointment of Lucy Heller as Chief Executive.
Lucy joined ARK in 2004 from TSL Education where she was joint Managing Director. Over the last eight years Lucy has managed ARK Schools, creating one of the country's most successful academy networks. Lucy will remain as Managing Director of ARK Schools but the network's experienced Executive will continue to oversee operations, education, project direction, programme management and development.
Walworth Academy today announced the appointment of the outstanding principal of Little Ilford School in Newham as the successor to Walworth's founding principal, Devon Hanson, who has moved to become the principal of ARK's Evelyn Grace Academy in Brixton.
Zambia's Minister of Health, Dr Kasonde, cut the ribbon to mark the official handing over of four new cold storage facilities to the Ministry of Health in Lusaka last Tuesday. 800 cubic metres have been added to the national capacity with ARK funding half of the expansion. Zambia is now equipped to safely store vast quantities of new and existing vaccines, a major step towards securing children's health in the country.
King Solomon Academy is featured in an article in The Economist and was also praised by Anthony Seldon in a Sunday Times piece on what independent schools can learn from the state sector.
The school also appeared on Newsnight in their piece about the new exams to replace GCSE. Watch it here.
ARK Schools today reported the network's sixth GCSE results, covering the five ARK academies with a GCSE cohort this year. Since each school opened as an ARK academy the average annual increase in pupils achieving five GCSEs at A*-C including English and mathematics is 6.5 percentage points.
The school data shows that 57% of ARK pupils have achieved five A*-C grades including English and maths. This compares to an average of 19% in the predecessor schools seven years ago.
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