Upper Shirley High School - Principal's Welcome

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Principal's Welcome

An Introduction to USH

Upper Shirley High is a small coeducational school in the heart of the Upper Shirley geographical area of Southampton. We are part of a Cooperative Learning Community with the local primaries in the same area: Shirley Junior and Shirley Infants Schools, Wordsworth Infant School, Hollybrook Junior and Hollybrook Infant Schools as well as Great Oaks Special School. Tauntons 6^th Form College is also one of our partners. Our cluster arrangements ensure that the 2 junior schools are the main primary links but we work extremely closely with all of the schools. This has fostered a very real sense of community where all that we do is centred on the dynamic progression from ‘reception’ through to post 16 for all children in our local area. All of the schools in the community are part of The Charitable Trust and this ensures the continuity and sustainability of relationships and partnership working well into the future.

I have had the very real pleasure of being the Principal here since September 2004 and can testify to this school being a truly dynamic organisation, with improving academic results. I am delighted to say that over the last few years we continue to exceed our targets. This year we were acknowledged as the most improved school in Southampton since 2007 and I have been invited to 10 Downing Street in recognition of our improvements. This year our GCSE results were our best ever and we have set even more challenging targets for 2012.

The Ofsted inspection in May 2011 judged us as being a good school with many outstanding features and I concur in, that I believe that we are an outstandingly good school! However, we know ourselves well and want to ensure that every single lesson is outstanding before we get that overall judgement. We want all of our improvements to be embedded and sustainable, never a ‘quick fix’ and so there is still work to do if we are to become a completely outstanding school; we are actively working towards this as Ofsted commented – ‘The school has an outstanding capacity to sustain further improvements’,

We have carefully fostered our caring ‘family’ ethos which places the individual child very firmly at the heart of our development. We pride ourselves in being a small school where every child is known by name and encouraged to develop their own individual personality and strengths. ‘Students exhibit an impressive acceptance of other people and show great respect for their religions and traditions. They have excellent ability to consider moral dilemmas and their ability to work cooperatively in groups is excellent.’ (Ofsted 2011)

While we put the child at the heart of our school community we strive to be at the heart of our local community, providing support and resources for a range of community activities; a ‘Village Fair’ and a community Christmas Fayre as examples as well as hosting a range of sporting events; dance festivals and musical events and providing an increasing number of holiday programmes for younger pupils. We are currently developing a cross school choir and orchestra and from September have engaged an ‘artiste in residence’ to help further develop dance and creativity across the school. Alongside the successful integrated after school and holiday programme for students from across our ‘learning community’ the school houses a fully Ofsted approved breakfast and after school provision for the very youngest of the community.

Over the last few academic years we achieved a number of key awards, including Healthy Schools, Arts Mark Gold, The International Schools Award, 2 Sports Mark Awards and Investors in People. Our Learning Community is currently working towards the UNICEF award for Rights Respecting Schools, which focuses on the universal human rights of the child. However the processes that we go through are more important than the kite marks themselves.

Central to our ethos is the pastoral organisation of the school which is based on a family system of four school houses: Aviators, Engineers, Mariners and Venturers. Each is led by a teaching Head of House, whose focus is primarily on teaching and learning and academic achievement. They are well supported by a student House Captain and Sports Captain, whose focus is on inter-house competition and support. The student voice is extremely important in our school and students hold a number of key responsibilities from prefects to sports captains, from librarians to student mentors.

‘Students appreciate the many opportunities to take on additional responsibilities including being buddies for students when they enter the school, mentor to support pupils in partner primary schools to improve their mathematics and ample opportunities to be involved with the life of the school though the active and effective school council…Local, national and international links contribute extremely well to raising students’ awareness and interest in global issues.’(Ofsted 2011)

Student council elections are held every year and the council meets with me on a half-termly basis. The student council is subdivided into working groups with responsibilities for charity work, international links and working with teachers on improving teaching and learning. We have family tutor groups, including students from year 7 - 11, this enables the older students to support the younger ones in school, be positive role models and prevent bullying. Our older students also support activities in our cluster schools from literacy support programmes with infant aged pupils to organising and supervising sporting activities.

Running alongside the House system we have a strong and successful Student Support Service which covers all areas of pastoral support including: attendance, special educational needs, emotional support, support for students with English as an additional language and ‘Gifted and Talented’.

Students are essentially taught according to their age group in specific subject areas. The curriculum is led by senior middle leaders responsible for Learning Centres’. . Some subjects are taught in ability based groups whilst others are taught in mixed ability groups. However, we are increasingly developing personalised learning, with each student following individual pathways based on their own academic and learning profile. There are increasing numbers of students following individual accelerated curriculum routes through the school and widening enrichment programmes. Generally the school operates a 2 year KS3 programme and a 3 year KS4 programme. This allows greater flexibility when entering students for GCSEs allowing some to complete in 2 years, others in 3.

We have an extremely strong PE department which consistently achieves considerable success, across city and county alike. We regularly win the city athletics championship for boys in Years 7-10 and our girls are now catching up the boys in the numbers of trophies they win!. All our students take part and thoroughly enjoy a wide range of sporting activities. We have a School Sports Coordinator based at Upper Shirley High; ensuring close working with our cluster schools; despite changes to government funding of the scheme at USH we are committed to sports development within our community of schools and will continue with the coordinator programme.

Our dining room (The Pavilions) serves both attractive and nutritious food with a clear focus is on healthy eating we serve a variety of hot and cold food, which is prepared and freshly cooked on the premises by a team of dedicated staff. Breakfast is available before school and a variety of healthy snacks can be purchased during the mid morning break. In addition to The Pavilions the school has an attractive patio area that the students can enjoy throughout the year. Throughout the year we have a number of ‘International Days’ where students sample menus from across the world.

Extra curricular activities have grown tremendously over the last few years including developments with our cluster schools. We have a fantastic school production which allows students to excel in music, drama and dance and we worked closely with Creative Partnerships to ensure that we could bring in professional expertise to support our students. Last year the expressive arts area performed ‘My Fair Lady’ which I most definitely think was of a professional ‘West End’ standard. Even though Creative Partnerships have ceased as a government funded organisation our work will continue to be even better supported through our own ‘artiste in residence’. Through support from Creative Partnerships we have created a student based TV station, which captures much of the life at USH as well as supporting staff in their own development through recordings of lessons. There are any number of activities on offer every night of the week and we expect our students to take part. Their participation is celebrated through the ‘Passport of Promises’ award scheme. Alongside a whole range of sporting activities, drama, art and music, Young Engineers and the Enterprise Club to name but a few, we run a ‘period 6’ four nights a week to support students in coursework, homework and individual support. However, many of our students simply stay after school to ‘play’ in a safe and secure environment.

In April 2009 we became the first Cooperative Trust school in the South of England. Our association with the Cooperative Society underpins our school values of: self help, self responsibility, democracy, equity equality and community. This is supported by openness, honesty, social responsibility and caring for others. Membership of the cooperative family has delivered a unique network of other cooperative schools as well as enriching our international links and global awareness. Our other trustees InTec, Oil Spill UK, Tauntons College and Solent EBP are central to the improvements in the school, developing our curriculum and progressing life opportunities for our students.

We have a really good relationship with our parents, who are very active members of the school community. Our PTA constantly supports the school with a whole range of activities, our parent governors are active within our ‘outstanding’ governing body and we have changed the focus for the parent forum into the Parent EBI (even better if). To achieve the standards that we all want for our youngsters it is vital that we all work together; sometimes as a school we get it wrong and that is where communication is essential with parents feeling that they can raise concerns and be listened to.

From August 1 2011 we converted to academy status. I am delighted to say that the DfE made the decision based on our improving academic performance; this was then underpinned by our Ofsted inspection. As an academy we will still be an active partner in the Upper Shirley Cooperative Trust and will remain a cooperative school. However, our funding will come directly from the Department for Education rather than through the local authority. This move gives us greater independence and flexibility to continue to deliver that constantly improving education for our students for whom we have a very real passion for success. We have already been able to employ additional teaching staff, an artiste in residence and a full time careers advisor and will continue to enhance opportunities for all our students. However, I would just like to emphasise to our community that our academy status is as a ‘converter academy’ – conferred only on good schools.

Life continues to be exciting at Upper Shirley High. Working together with parents, governors, students, staff and community representatives we have a clear vision of how great we want our school to become and how we are going to get there! The future is about developing a quality education for all of our children in their own community. ‘Upper Shirley High is a good school. Under the inspirational leadership of the principal the school has continued on its journey of improvement…The principal and senior leadership team have a clearly focused vision for the school which is shared and understood by all members of the school community…The school has an outstanding capacity to sustain further improvements.’ (Ofsted 2011)

I hope you will join us on our continuing exciting journey.

Cassie Ellins
Principal