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Welcome to the Thurstable School, Sports College and Sixth Form Centre web site, which, like the rest of the school continues to develop and improve. I trust that you will find what you are looking for on the site – please let us know if you don’t.
We as a Sports College deliver outstanding sport and physical education for our pupils, and our Schools Sports Partnership continues to be a nationally recognised model of excellence, making a major contribution to sport and physical education in over 100 partner schools. We offer a wide range of extracurricular activities, trips and visits, including residential experiences, and our creative arts productions are exceptional in terms of both their quality and the number and range of pupils they involve and inspire. We have a thriving Parents, Teachers and Friends Association, strong and developing links with other schools, training providers and businesses in the area, and our standing in the local community is high.
The past year has seen the school move closer to its aim of helping our students to become genuinely independent learners, and ultimately confident, resilient and successful adults. We work closely with parents, and we serve our community. We have a number of excellent new staff in key posts, and a sharper focus on how we can improve further from our ABBs – Achieve More, Belong More, Be More. Elsewhere on this web site you can find our three year School Development Plan based around these aspirations that we hold for all our people, and I would encourage you to compare our plans with your own hopes and ambitions for your children. I am confident you will find them a close match.
Our results this year continued the upward trend we have sustained for the last three years. The average point score in our Sixth Form was up again on 2008. 59% of our Year 11 scored 5 or more A*-C passes at GCSE, with 45% of the year group scoring 5 or more A*-C passes at including English and Mathematics. My thanks go to our students and their teachers for the hard work and commitment that made these successes possible. I would also like to thank our parents for the invaluable support they provide to their children, and offer to the school.
In the coming academic year we are looking forward to improving the service we offer our students and our parents still further. Our new curriculum with four options instead of two in Years 10 and 11 and a greater focus on the development of personal, learning and thinking skills at KS3 will be in place, and we will be using it to help students to even higher levels of achievement. Our Learning Relationship Coordinators are in post, supporting children through the social and emotional challenges of growing up, and releasing form tutors to focus clearly on monitoring and mentoring their tutees as individual learners. ThurSpace, our virtual learning environment, is up and running and is already adding a new dimension of learning and communication to our school community.
It’s going to be an exciting year.
MAS Bacon
Head Teacher
September 2009