kan iemand me aub helpen met deze tekst vertalen.
ik weet dat het gaat over een meisjes school, die goed op de ranglijst staat. het is een lagere school
maar verder,,,,??
St Albans High School for Girls
“I want children to love to come to school every day,” says Sue Dunkerley, head of St Albans High School for Girls Primary School (known as Wheathampstead House). “Children need to be happy. The atmosphere here is warm and welcoming, people are friendly. Girls need to feel secure to thrive and flourish.”
And flourish they do. The school’s commitment to the pursuit of excellence for every pupil has seen it achieve outstanding academic success and its position in our league table has consistently improved, moving up from a ranking of 12= in 2005 to ninth, then sixth and now fourth, in the process making a compelling case to win this year’s Independent Preparatory School of the Year award.
Performing well above the national average, almost all its 11-year-olds reach level 5 in Sats tests for English, maths and science, the standard expected at the age of 13. In the past three years Wheathampstead House has scored 872 points out of a possible 900 at this level, a remarkable accomplishment.
The school moved out of St Albans to the nearby Hertfordshire village of Wheathampstead in 2003 to enable it to meet growing demand for places and expand to include infants as well as juniors, having previously taken children only from the age of seven.
The 314 pupils generally come from the surrounding affluent towns and villages but while annual fees cost more than £9,000, bursaries of up to 100% of tuition fees can be applied for once children enter the junior years.
Housed in a newly refurbished listed building set in 18 acres of rural parkland the school is as impressive aesthetically as the education it offers. “It is a lovely place to come,” says Dunkerley. “You start off with an excellent frame of mind when you come to school.”
The move has proved a springboard for developing the school’s vision of a highly academic but rounded education where independent learning and active participation are prized. As well as an annual independent learning week, girls are encouraged to use critical thinking skills across the curriculum. Most subjects are taught by specialist teachers, including French, which girls learn from year 3 onwards.
Keen to stretch the most able pupils, Wheathampstead House has also introduced classes for more gifted and talented children. Staffing levels are high which means that from year three there are just 12 children in maths and English classes.
A generous number of classroom assistants ensure those who require attention get it.
So confident is the school of its academic achievement that it has taken the decision to ditch external Sats for its 11-year-olds. From next year girls will only sit the senior school entrance exam for the high school, the usual destination for the vast majority of pupils.
“We feel our results have been improving such a lot and many of the girls are getting 100% in what they are doing,” says Dunkerley. “We are keen to get these independent learning and thinking skills and creative work into the curriculum. We have to spend a bit of time practising for the Sats test and we feel that we could use the time to prepare the girls for senior school and extend the curriculum.”
Pupils will still do the optional Sats in years 3, 4 and 5 so their progress can be tracked (although a consequence of the move to ditch external Sats in year 6 will mean that after 2009, the school will disappear from our prep schools’ league table).
With enviable facilities including music and art rooms, fantastic woodland and the shared use of the high school’s new sports complex which includes a 25m swimming pool and an air conditioned dance studio with sprung floor, there is clearly a lot more going on at Wheathampstead House than teaching the three Rs.
It is a busy school with a busy schedule. All pupils take part in drama productions, from the Christmas show by the infants to an evening of entertainment from the juniors and a farewell summer performance from year 6. Most pupils learn at least one instrument if not two and close links with the high school means that talented musicians can play at their level in orchestras or bands with senior pupils.
There are regular excursions including an annual field trip to Yorkshire for pupils due to head off to secondary school.
A rich variety of extracurricular activities also allows pupils to learn and develop new skills and interests from fencing, lacrosse and tap dancing to a range of languages including Japanese, Mandarin and Italian. Speech and drama classes are also on offer.
All these clubs are considered very much a part of the curriculum. “There is a lot of emphasis on education in its widest sense,” says Dunkerley. “We are known for being an academic school and these standards are a given that we work to, but we believe that the whole educational experience is important. It is vital that children have good self-esteem and confidence.”
On the sports field, pupils learn the importance of teamwork and how to handle victory and defeat, as well as useful skills in activities from orienteering to cross-country and netball.
A girl’s attitude at school is key to how they approach work in the classroom and on the pitch, according to the head. “We do a lot of work on positive thinking,” says Dunkerley, “not giving up on things, seeing the good side of things even if they do not work out as you thought they would.”
Motivated children require motivated teachers and they are not hard to find at Wheathampstead House. Ofsted inspectors described staff as “well qualified, hard-working and enthusiastic” when they visited the school two years ago. “Pupils make excellent progress at every stage in their schooling and between stages,” their report added.
Regular teacher training days are used by staff to discuss new teaching methods that will help capture the imagination of children.
“For the past couple of years we have been looking at our teaching, at how we could be inspirational,” says Dunkerley, “We look at what makes good teaching and what is successful learning. We have a shared vision of how we want to be and what we want to be. It is very clear to everybody in the school. Everybody works together as a team and that makes the difference.”
That team includes the senior school as well, five miles away in St Albans. Dunkerley is a member of the senior management team which covers both school sites.
The sense of family is further enhanced by the support of a large number of parents who come in to help with reading, practical activities and school trips.
Children are taught to value each other as well as themselves and all staff from teachers to secretaries and dinner ladies are considered role models. The Church of England school is about to introduce a system where older girls monitor the playground at break time to ensure younger ones have friends to play with.
“To us the school is like a family, everybody is different but everybody is valued for who they are and is nurtured to develop their potential,” says Dunkerley. “We are trying to provide a solid foundation for children that can sustain them through their life.”