THE HEAD teacher of a Basingstoke secondary school where GCSE results dropped sharply this year has said she hopes prospective and current parents and pupils will trust her that standards will improve.

Julie Rose took over Everest Community College in 2007 and was determined to turn around the failing school, which had been given notice to improve.

Her promise to raise the standards of education looked like it was being fulfilled as GCSE exam results steadily improved in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Last year, the school in Oxford Way, Popley, managed to hit the benchmark 30 per cent of students gaining five A* to C grades, including English and maths, and an influx of pupils joined the new-look school, which opened in September 2007.

However, this year, Everest suffered a setback as just 17.4 per cent of Year 11 pupils reached the same level.

Ms Rose initially said this was expected, but offered little further explanation as to why the results were so bad.

Now, the head has explained in more detail why she believes the grades were low, and has said she hopes parents will still believe and trust her that standards can, and will, improve.

Ms Rose said the school is guided by external data from the Fischer Family Trust, which sets targets for each year group depending on the make up of the pupils.

For the last Year 11, the predictions showed that 17 to 24 per cent would achieve the benchmark grades.

Pupils did achieve as predicted – but questions have remained as to why they were not expected to achieve higher grades.

Ms Rose said the simple fact was that higher achieving pupils were not attracted to the school when this group of students started – and she believes that was because of the poor results achieved in the past.

She added that the pupils’ learning was also disrupted when the school moved to the new building in 2007.

But Ms Rose was adamant that Everest did not fail the last cohort of Year 11 pupils.

She said: “We had quite a lot of children who we pushed from E and F grades to D grades, but that isn’t reflected in the results. The Critical Value Added (CVA) score for this year will be better than last.”

The CVA score takes into account the level of progress made by pupils throughout their time at school, which many believe is a far better indication of how well a school has achieved than the actual results.

Schools normally divide pupils on ability, but Ms Rose said for these pupils, there were no top sets, so high grades were never going to be achieved because pupils were not capable of gaining top marks.

Despite this year’s disappointing results, Ms Rose hopes prospective parents and pupils, who will now be choosing which secondary school they wish to join next year, will see past this year’s results.

Ms Rose, who won the regional Head Teacher of the Year in a Secondary School Award at the Teaching Awards 2009, said: “It’s a question of whether people believe me. I believe the work we have done here is significant.”

She added: “I knew taking this job on that the first three years were going to be the most difficult. But I’m here and I’m not walking away from it and I still believe, as I always have, that Everest is going to be a good school for Basingstoke. But it does take time.”

Councillor Roy Perry, the new executive member for children’s services at Hampshire County Council, said a range of measures have been employed to raise attainment at Everest.

He added: “All the evidence suggests that, through these measures, attainment levels at the school will begin to show improvement with the current cohort of pupils.”