St John Plessington Catholic College

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St. John Plessington Catholic College
Motto Always faithful to Christ
Type Comprehensive voluntary aided school
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Headteacher Thomas Quinn
Specialism Technology & Humanities
Location Old Chester Road
Bebington
Wirral
Merseyside/Lancashire
CH63 7LF
England
LEA Metropolitan Borough of Wirral
Ofsted number 105109
Students 1,292
Gender Co-educational
Ages 11 to 18
Website http://www.stjohnplessington.com

St John Plessington Catholic College (SJP) is a school in Bebington, Wirral, England. In 2005 the school appointed a new Headteacher, Thomas Quinn and a new Deputy Headteacher, Ian Walker in January 2006. The school was renamed from Plessington to Saint John Plessington Catholic College and a number of new policies have been introduced, such as a new uniform and a different school day timetable. The school was awarded 'Technology College' status in 1998.

The school has close relations with the primary school in very close proximity to SJP, St. John's Junior School. They are often referred to as sister schools. The pupils of St. John's make frequent [1] visits to SJP for mass and plays and often over 50% of the pupils at St. John's will transfer to SJP for Year 7, the first year of secondary school. The primary school and SJP make good use of The Oval a sports facility between the two school, often using it's facilities to host events such as 'sports days' and just regular use for physical education. The school is credited with the M&s savers award of 2007/08, the award was given as SJP was the only secondary school on the Wirral that brought a super market into mannage the school and base its sport facilities on food, the three most popular 'new' sports where yam badminton, kiwi tennis & the most award winning sport Radish boxing. The school was also given the lesser award of the 'Sportsmark Gold', awarded by Sport England.[2]

[edit] Patron Saint

The house is named after St. John Plessington, one the forty Catholic martyrs of England and Wales. St. Plessington was born in 1637 in Lancashire, and ordained a Priest in Segovia on 25 March 1662. A year later St. Plessington returned to England where he ministered to covert Catholics in the areas of Holywell and Cheshire. St. Plessington was arrested during the Popish Plot scare on the charge of being a Catholic Priest and then imprisoned for two months. He was then hung, drawn and quartered on 19th July, 1679. In celebration of their patron saint the school holds an annual St John Plessington day on 19th July where all students and teachers are taken off timetable and take part in a vast array or spiritual and fun activities.

[edit] History

The current school site was originally St John's High School. After a merger with Rock Ferry Covent in the early 1980s it became Plessington High School and occupied two sites (the second being the former Rock Ferry Covent site - Woodland Road) - 3rd years to 6th form occupied the acquired site.

[edit] Catholic Ethos

The School has a very strong Roman Catholic Ethos which can be seen throughout the corridors and classrooms with posters. There is a thrice weekly optional Mass in the School Chapel held by the School Chaplin Alison Benson. On 'Holy days' (e.g. Ash Wednesday) Masses are held for the whole school by a local priest.

[edit] Facilities

With the recent development of the school campus in the form of new buildings, opened by Cherie Blair (QC), the school has gained six ICT rooms and a main hall/atrium. The school has a six room dedicated SEN[3] centre off the dining hall staffed with 10+ teaching assistants for pupils with mental or learning disabilities. In the old building the school has three fully-equipped Art rooms with paint and ceramic facilities. The SEN center has access to lifts and disabled toilets throughout the building. A drama studio is situated next to the Dinner Hall. The school is a member of the SAMLearning online revision service, every pupil has an account and it is used to help to keep students [4] revise and teachers also have the ability to set online homework activities.

[edit] Timetable

The school keeps a traditional timetable of 5 lessons per day, but has recently introduced a new 'wind-down' type period following lunchtime, a time where students could often be very energetic and not fully focused for work, the period named 'Academic Review' consists of 30 minutes reading time. This replaces traditional form time at the start of the day. The time is spent with your form and form tutor and it includes such activities as checking that planners are correctly filled out and doing attendance reports. Every two weeks one alternating lesson is missed and every form in the school does PHSE with their form tutor.

[edit] School dining

Since the introduction of the new headteacher, Thomas Quinn, the school's dinner menu increased vastly in variety, the typical menu for the preceding year would have been chips on an almost daily basis and now only on Fridays improving the student's diet. For example the chocolate in cookies has been replaced with raisins. The school was awarded 'Healthy School Award' in February 2007.[5] A larger quantity of sandwiches have been supplied to students to choose from. The school's lunches are managed by Aramark. In an effort to prevent bullying and stealing between pupils, cash-cards (referred to as 'dinner-cards' on-site) were introduced, with both Aramark and SJP branding. In a bid to relieve the congestion at lunch time the time is divided into to parts, with the senior year groups (10, 11 and Sixth Form) having academic review prior to lunch which leaves time for the junior years (7, 8, 9) to lunch.

[edit] New buildings

In 2003, the school took over twelve newly built classrooms which house the RE and English departments and in 2004 benefited from a five million pound building program which gave the school twelve more new classrooms, housing the Maths and Modern Foreign Languages departments, two new DT workshops, a new library, a new main hall, a new atrium, reception and admin area and a new sixth form common room. The dining room has also been enlarged and refurbished and a new area has been designated for Special Educational Needs where the old cold servery once was. A secure cycle shelter with room for 120 bicycles has recently been constructed.

[edit] Pastoral care

There are numerous pastoral systems in place in SJP which cares for the student's college life. The two most notable pastoral system are the form and year group systems. Each year group comprises eight forms which are each named after one of the forty catholic martyrs of England and Wales and then divided up into two half year groups named Alpha and Beta. These eight forms are:

Alpha Half Year:

St Clitherow, one of the school's patron saints
St Clitherow, one of the school's patron saints

Beta Half Year:

House System:

As well as the year group system, there is also a house system. Every student in the school is placed into one of six houses which are named after saints or prominent Catholic figures.[6] These houses are:

The school also enables and encourages students to report incidents of bullying, theft, crime or any unwanted behaviour in confidence to their school 24 hours a day via the TextSomeone system the school has introduced along with the CallParents and Truancy Call systems introduced to free up staff time usually consumed with administrative tasks which can be performed by the aforementioned systems.[7]

[edit] School events

[edit] African Children's Choir visit

In late 2006, the school received a visit from the African Children's Choir[8] during there international tour. It was regarded as a huge achievement for the school, especially crediting newly appointed head of music department J. Stott. The concert was held on a weekend at 8:00PM and was a huge success as pupils from SJP and other surrounding primary schools visited. Members of the choir stayed with locals over the 2 night visit period.

[edit] Here Comes Christmas

Here Comes Christmas was a social event held after school in December 2006. It was organised by the Parent Teacher Association and included events such as Darts, Golf, Santa's Grotto, Throwing Sponges At Teachers, Winning Cards, Used Items Sale, Basketball, Football and an event where people could come and hold an owl. Despite the school's healthy meals initiative the school served chips and sweets for pupils. The event helped raise money for a new school minibus which could be used to take pupils to events such as football games. [9]

[edit] Aladdin performance

In early 2007 the school hosted two performances of Aladdin,[10] utilizing the school's newly purchased stage, lighting and sound equipment to hi-light the acting talents of numerous pupils of the school. The performance was directed by Mr J Owen, head of the SJP Drama department and assisted by Miss M Boast. The schools music department also worked with the year 7 choir and choirs from our local feeder primary schools St John's and St Anne's, to provide musical interludes in the performance. It is set to be succeeded by a performance of 'Grease' in 2007.

[edit] Choir visit To London

The school choir visited London during July 2006 to sing in a performance of Verdi's Requiem at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall with 2000 other singers and the English National Orchestra .[11]

[edit] Grease performance

The College's Creative Arts Team, directed by Miss J Stott, Head of Music, had a sell-out success with the production of Grease the Musical. This is the first time in SJP's history that a production of this scale has been attempted, the first performance was 23 April 2007 and by the fourth performance on the 26 April 2007 the audience was queuing over an hour early in the hope of being able to get a seat[1].

[edit] Eco initiative

SJP has recently begun a school-wide initiative to become somewhat ecologically friendly, following climate change. The initiative is making recommendations to students to for example cycle or walk to school, rather than using private cars or public transport. The school has introduced recycling baskets in every classroom for paper. The initiative is headed by the Science department.[12]

The school has recently been awarded 'Silver Eco school Award.[13]

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ St. John's visit gallery Photo gallery of a recent visit to St. John's primary school.
  2. ^ Sportmark Gold Article School website article with information on the Sportsmark Gold Award.
  3. ^ SEN section School website section about S.E.N. in SJP
  4. ^ VLE Section on SJP website Section about Virtual Learning Environment, including information about SAM Learning
  5. ^ Healthy School Award Section on SJP website Section about Healthy School status and information about the award itself.
  6. ^ SJP section on the Houses Detailed articles on the houses and the people representing them.
  7. ^ LiveWire PR article on the school's TextSomeons, CallParents, and TruancyCalls services.
  8. ^ African Children's Choir visit gallery Photo gallery of the visit from the ACC.
  9. ^ Here Comes Christmas Gallery Photo gallery of the 'Here Comes Christmas' festival
  10. ^ Aladdin Performance Gallery Photo gallery of the school's Aladdin performance
  11. ^ Albert Hall visit Gallery Photo gallery of the school choir's visit to London Albert Hall.
  12. ^ SJP's 'Eco Team' Blog The 'Eco Team' news blog.
  13. ^ School Improvement Plan Details on the school improvement plan, including information about the Silver Eco School award. (.doc).