Hockerill Anglo-European College
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Hockerill Anglo-European College is an international boarding school located in Bishop's Stortford (ca. halfway between London and Cambridge). The college has many overseas students and this is partly because it has an excellent reputation for languages (to such an extent that the head of Modern Foreign Languages, Mike Ullmann, was awarded the award for best Secondary School Teacher of the Year).
In 1850, Hockerill was founded as a teacher training school for women. The training school was closed in 1978 and, in 1980, was reopened and as a state international school. However, back then it was known as Hockerill Anglo-European School. In 1998 it became known as Hockerill College rather than Hockerill School.
Hockerill has more than 700 scholars from many countries and nowadays is one of the best language colleges in the country. It offers, instead of A-Levels, the International Baccalaureate (IB). In this way the college is unique: it is the only international state boarding school in England. The school also gained Music College status recently thanks to funding, and the inspirational work of Paul Foulkes has blossomed in this respect. The Music College was officially opened by Lord David Puttnam on 8 October, 2006.
Hockerill is becoming more and more popular and its number of students is forever rising. Because of the student increase, the school is stricter when it comes to choosing its students. The students' school reports are inspected very carefully. The selection process seems to be having positive effects as the GCSE pass rates have been increasing greatly over the last few years.
The boarding section is divided into five boarding houses, two for the junior students (years 7-9) and three for the seniors (years 10-13). The boarding houses have their names, too: Thames House for senior boys; Roding House for senior girls; Rochester House, an extension to Roding, due to spacial restrictions; Canterbury House for junior boys; and St. Alban's House for junior girls. Notice that they are all named after areas in England.
Recently, in 2006, Hockerill College came top of the list of Times' Top State Schools in England. Hockerill is rapidly becoming noted for excellence since it chose to start and follow new approaches to the education of students. Apart from producing two students with a perfect IB score of 45 points, the average IB result of Hockerill was at its record highest in 2006, taking it up to the top of the league tables with UCAS points of 496.3. It beat its nearest rival by over 50 points. Hockerill College also celebrated, in late 2005, the receipt of the secondary school teacher of the year award by the Director of its Language College, Mr. Mike Ullmann at The Teaching Awards Ceremony in London, England.
