Cottesloe School

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The Cottesloe School
Motto	Give Me Now Wisdom And Knowledge
Type	Secondary Modern Foundation School
Headteacher	Mr Nigel Fox
Specialism	Arts College
Location	Wing Buckinghamshire England
LEA	Buckinghamshire
Ofsted number	110533
Students	1,100
Gender	Co-educational
Ages	11 to 18
Website	The Cottesloe School
Coordinates: 51°53′33″N 0°43′19″W / 51.892373, -0.721836

The Cottesloe School, formerly known as Wing County Secondary School, is a co-educational secondary school located on the outskirts of Wing, Buckinghamshire. It has a very large and attractive rural site with views of the countryside in one direction and overlooking Wing village and its Saxon church in the other. The school is a foundation school, which takes children from the age of 11 through to the age of 18. The school has 1,105 pupils, of which 136 are sixth formers. It has grown rapidly over the past few years

[edit] About the School

The Cottesloe School serves pupils from a wide rural area, including parts of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. Almost all are of white heritage backgrounds and very few have a home language other than English. Families in the area have ready access to a range of selective and comprehensive schools. One in ten pupils, lower than national figures, has learning difficulties and disabilities. Numbers in the sixth form are increasing rapidly. Pupils that do not pass the 11+ go to The Cottesloe however more and more pupils that do pass are choosing to go to the school. Ofsted recently described the school as 'a welcoming place where everyone is well known'.

[edit] Facilities

The Cottesloe has many facilities available for its students to use. These include:

• Teaching rooms and offices arranged in subject suites
• Two gymnasia which can be used for badminton, indoor football, basketball or any other number of indoor sports
• A number of outdoor pitches and athletic facilities
• Drama and stage facilities
• A large hall
• Two playgrounds that can be basketball and tennis
• Five ICT rooms
• Eight Science Laboratories
• Three Design Technology classrooms for resistant materials
• A Food Technology classroom
• A Textiles classroom
• A Media Studies classroom
• A large car park

[edit] Coach Park

The school has a purpose built eight bay coach park that is used at the beginning of the day to drop student off at the school and to collect them at the end of the day. The school has a timetable of which bay buses need to go to and what time they have to collect students. Currently the earliest time that students are dropped off at the beginning of the day is 8:00am and the latest time that they are collected is 3:30pm. The coach park is also used when school visits are arranged.

[edit] Future Plans

Future plans for the school include:

• New kitchen and canteen for students and staff
• An all-weather floodlit football pitch
• Hockey facilities
• Replacement of the old gymnasium with a newer, more modern one

[edit] The School Day

[edit] Lessons

The school opens at 8:40am and at ends at 3:00pm. The day is divided into ten periods, each lesson being half an hour long, but many classes are doubled up meaning that lessons last one hour. Each year is designated a day to have assembly, which is held during afternoon registration in the main school hall.

[edit] Extra Curricular Activities

There are a number of extra curricular activities offered to students at The Cottesloe School. These are offered at lunchtime and after school and include choir, orchestra, technology, drama, dance art and a variety of sporting activities.

[edit] Uniform

The school has a straightforward but strict uniform policy which students must adhere to at all times. The dress code states that student should do the following:

• Wear a shirt/blouse that must be tucked into trousers/skirt.
• Wear black shoes, not boots
• Wear the School tie properly
• Wear only topcoats that are black, grey or blue, free of all but the most discreet logos
• Should only have ears and noses pierced during the long holiday and studs must removed before returning to School
• Girls’ trousers should be school type and not tight fitting or fashion type
• Skirts must not be tight and must be of a reasonable length with no buttons or splits
• Must not have Extreme haircuts/styles/colours
• Must not wear Hoodies and leisure tops.

[edit] Expansion

The Cottesloe School has grown rapidly over the past ten years with the building of three new teaching blocks, the most recognisable of these being B block which can be seen from the back entrance of the school. The school is still expected to increase in size because of the building of new houses in the nearby town of Leighton Buzzard.

[edit] GCSE Results

GCSE Results at The Cottesloe have been gradually increasing since 2001, but with a slight drop in 2005. In 2004, the school got its highest ever GCSE results with over 70% of students achieving 5A*-C grades. In 2006 the GCSE results were 60% of students gaining 5A*-C grades.

[edit] Sixth Form

The schools sixth form has increased considerably in the past five years. In 2001 less than 40 sixth formers attended the school but in 2006 the numbers had reached just over 130 meaning that more courses could be offered at the school. Students have five lessons per week of each course that they do. However because of the huge increase in numbers there are now not enough facilities in the school for sixth formers, a main issue that OFSTED pin-pointed on their last inspection to the school in November 2006. There are currently plans taking place to solve this problem ready for September 2007 when many more students are expected to join. In 2006 just over half of the students that took their GCSEs at the school came back to the sixth form. Very few joined from other schools.

In July 2007 a committee of 16 sixth formers was formed to discuss issues that arise around the school and for the sixth form. The head boy, his deputy and the head girl and her deputy lead the committee.

[edit] Sixth Form Committee (July 2007 - June 2008)

Stephen Hart (Head boy), Jessica Roberts (Head girl), Jamie Graham (Deputy Head boy), Sarah Nicholls (Deputy Head girl), Daniel Henderson, Helen Record, Tyler Penman, Jess Bailey, Vicki Barker, Gary Way, Kerry Huggett, Ben Branch, Michelle Myall, Jack Murrell, Ben Platt, Tom Hedley

Year 12 Reps: Ollie Rust, Michael Ellis,

As of June 2008, the current committee will be dissolved and a new one will be formed for September 2008.

[edit] Unions

The idea of unions has just been introduced to The Cottesloe Sixth Form, which will hopefully integrate the upper and lower sixth better and will create more social events for students to go to.

The four unions are Earth, Fire, Air and Water, named after the four elements.

[edit] Heads of Unions

[edit] Specialism

In September 2006 the school was awarded specialist school status as an Arts College, by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES).

In January 2008, the school was awarded Sportsmark status by the English Sports Council (Sport England).

[edit] Headteachers

[edit] 2007 Developments

During the 2007 summer break the school was completely redecorated, with most classrooms being painted and old floors replaced. Interactive whiteboards were purchased and placed in most rooms around the school in an effort to boost GCSE and A Level results and to try and make learning more fun for students. A new pathway was built on what once used to be a derelict mud patch that students walked over to get from one side of the site to another, creating mess around the school because of the mud. There are now plans to place picnic tables around this area to give pupils somewhere to eat their lunches.

[edit] External links

• School website
• Cottesloe Virtual Learning Environment
• Ofsted Report
• DfES Performance Tables
• BBC News Text Mentoring