A FORMER Wyvern Community School pupil has launched a petition to ‘save’ it from converting to academy status.

Jodie Pitt has set-up an online petition and Facebook campaign to halt plans for the switchover which is due to take place next year.

The Marchfields Way school in Weston, which it to be adopted by the Cabot Learning Federation, is to close on April 30 and reopen as the Hans Price Academy on May 1, which would see it detach from local education authority control and run independently.

Jodie launched the campaign last week and issued a plea to all ex-pupils of the school to sign her petition.

She said: “Wyvern as we knew it is under threat from the men in suits who seek to turn Wyvern into a business where hitting targets is more important than the proper education of children.

“The academy system turns pupils into mere numbers, where in order to hit their targets they must dumb-down the curriculum in order for children to be seen as achieving the required standard rather than taking the far tougher option of actually bringing pupils up to standard.”

She said new curriculum has already been created and ‘no subject has been left untouched’.

She added: “Staff now work in a school where their feelings and opinions mean nothing and they’re all left fighting for their jobs.”

The petition will be handed into North Somerset Council early next year.

As the Mercury went to press no one from the school was available for comment.

Meanwhile the council’s Children and Young People’s Services Policy and Scrutiny Panel was due to meet yesterday to discuss the changeover.

It was recommended that the executive member for Children and Young People’s Services grants permission to officially propose the closure of Wyvern next year and reopen it as North Somerset’s first academy.

The report states that the school would need to consider possible staffing reductions irrespective of whether or not the academy is established, but it has been earmarked for a capital grant of �18.3million to remodel and expand the building.