Thomas Telford School

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Thomas Telford School
Motto Quality through co-operation
Established 1991
Type City Technology College
Headmaster Sir Kevin Satchwell
Location Old Park
Telford
Shropshire
TF3 4NW
Flag of England England
LEA Telford & Wrekin
Students 1200
Gender Co-educational
Ages 11 to 18
Website www.ttsonline.net

Thomas Telford School is a City Technology College in Telford, Shropshire, England. Often referred to as 'TTS', it is consistently among the best performing comprehensive schools in England.[1]

Contents

[edit] Background

Founded in 1991, the school was deemed a pioneering 'experiment' in specialist CTCs. The college's catchment area includes Telford, Wolverhampton and the villages and suburbs in between. The reason for this is that one of the school's leading sponsors, 'Tarmac' wanted to give something back to the Wolverhampton community in which the company is based. Unfortunately, a suitable location was not found in Wolverhampton, so it was built in Telford instead, but still inviting Wolverhampton students. One of the school's initial main aims was to help relieve the underperforming schools in the urban areas of Wolverhampton. Thomas Telford School is unique in the sense that it generates most of its funds itself through the sale of its online curriculum content which is sold through its subsidiary company TTSOnline Limited (Thomas Telford School Online Limited). See online curriculum.

[edit] Online curriculum

The school produces and sells what it calls an "online curriculum". This consists of a wealth of interactive learning materials, online tasks and even podcasts which all relate to various subject areas. The school's subsidiary company TTSOnline Ltd. then sells access to the content to other schools for a fixed price. Schools have the option to purchase access to one specific course (for example DiDA), or purchase the entire online curriculum. In addition to the online learning resources that the school provides, the school also provides training days; during these days the teaching staff from other schools can attend seminars at the school and learn the methods in which the school teaches the courses which it provides on its online curriculum and how to maximise the effectiveness of using it in a classroom environment. This combined training for and selling of the online curriculum is known as Project 40.

[edit] Information technology

The school has long been at the forefront of using IT for education, the school makes use of electronic whiteboards provided by SMART Technologies in all classrooms, learning bases and study rooms. In addition to this the school has an advanced internal network operating mainly using Novell and Windows Advanced Server 2003 products. The school also provides an extranet, which is run using Novell Virtual Office, allowing students and staff to access their files and e-mail from anywhere in the world via the virtual office portal. Thomas Telford School also hosts its online curriculum in-house, with a web server and Real Streaming Media Server housed in the computer services department of the school. To compliment this, the school also has a mirror of its online curriculum at a high-speed London data centre.

To allow high-speed access to the internet from the hundreds of computers found within the school (at least one in every classroom and around one hundred in each of the schools 'Independent Learning Centres' (ILC's)) the school has two permanent Internet connections. This is distributed by a network mainly comprising of Cisco and 3Com routers and switches with a 3Com CoreBuilder 9000 at the networks core. Protecting the schools network are two Watchguard Firebox firewalls, as well as a SurfControl content filtering system, SurfControl e-mail risk filter and SOPHOS AntiVirus system. The SurfControl system prevents users from accessing the more unsightly aspects of the internet and also protects the schools '@ttsonline.net' e-mail addresses from unwanted SPAM. The schools network is further supported by a fibre-optic network backbone.

The school also has a state-of-the-art CAD/CAM suite; which provides access to an array of various Roland CAM CNC milling and machining equipment and a large bedded CO2 laser cutter which provides pinpoint accuracy when cutting a variety of materials. The CAD/CAM suite also consists of an HP A1 Pantone printer, HP A3 colour laser printer and HP A3 inkject laser printer as well as the schools network of other laser printers. The CAD/CAM suite also houses around 50 Dell workstations for students to produce work on the various CAD packages the school has which includes the latest version of AutoDesk Inventor. The school's Design Technology department also includes 2 workshops fully kitted out with CNC lathes, wood-turning lathes, metal working lathes, Hegner scroll saws and pillar drills as well as a menagerie of other equipment.

The school also has its own in-house video editing studio complete with chroma-key (blue-screen) facility. Here it produces its weekly broadcast (which replaces weekly assemblies seen at other schools) as well as the traditional Year 7 'Battle of Hastings' re-enactment epic. The media-services team at the school consists of one Flash designer, 2 website developers, and 2 digital video editors and videographers. The video suite is fitted with a full suite of Avid Adrenaline video editing equipment. Moreover, a broadband and co-axial video network allows the broadcast of pre-recorded and live events from anywhere within the school.

[edit] Achievements and school life

The school caters for students from the age of 11 through to 18. This is in a system of national year groups from Year 7 to 6.2 (year 13). The school also has a unique and successful system of after school curricular activities which are compulsory, and which it claims is pivotal to its success over the past years. GCSE and A level results have also improved year on year.

The school is also well known for its sporting prowess, with regular success in many sports at all levels, including county, regional and national levels.

The school is unique for a number of reasons: It has not one, but several deputy heads; in place of daily assemblies, are televised, daily 'broadcasts' to the rest of the school in each classroom; there are electronic whiteboards in every classroom and lessons are three hours long. One of the deputy heads Dara Carroll released a choir song album in his younger years.

In its short lifetime, barely a decade old, the school has made several notable achievements. Its current Headmaster, Sir Kevin Satchwell, was knighted in 2001 for services to education and the community,[2] and from 1998 to the present day, TTS has been named 'the most successful Comprehensive school in the UK', after 100% of its pupils gained 5 or more A*-C GCSE's, being the first and only comprehensive school ever to do so.

A rigorous method of applicant selection takes place, including an entrance test to allow all abilities to be reflected and equally proportioned in the school.

The school makes its online curriculum of teaching resources available to other schools. This is a highly successful project, with many schools being customers of Thomas Telford School Online Ltd.

[edit] Ranking

In 2005 Thomas Telford school produced the best results of any school comprehensive or otherwise at 16. Thomas Telford students scored an average of 760.3 points per student, more than 100 points better than it's nearest rival. Headmaster Sir Kevin Satchwell commented that the school no longer uses the traditional yardstick of five or more GCSE passes at grades A* to C since all students achieved at least 12 GCSE passes at grades A* to C. [3]

In 2006 the scoring system for Secondary Schools league tables was adjusted to stipulate that GCSE Mathematics and English must be included in pupils performance. The measure used remains % of students achieving 5 or more passes at Grade A*-C in GCSE or Equivalent. As a result, most schools performance declined in 2006 when compared to 2005 results using the previous measure. Thomas Telford achieved 95% 5 or more top grade passes under the new system compared to 100% in 2005 under the old system. Using the new measure retrospectively, Thomas Telford's results would have been 94%, 92% and 96% for 2003 through 2005 respectively.[4]

[edit] Controversy

There is has been much controversy over the success of the School. For instance, it repeatedly cites the high ranking for GCSE results, but its ICT courses, for example, are only GNVQs, and tailor-made at the school for the students.[5]

Further, it is interesting to note that the school provides no information regarding its somewhat miraculous turn-around of results for the area except apparent 'teaching improvement'. Indeed, it would be interesting to discover how the school has gone from a 20% pass rate (5 GCSEs and above) of the other local school, Madeley Court, to an almost 100% pass rate at TTS.[6] The unwillingness of the school to share information on its success seems an odd practice; for its strategies towards success could surely be used to rejuvenate other underperforming schools, rather than the current governmental stance which is to convert them to CTCs before educational achievement can be regained.

[edit] Expansion

In 2004, Thomas Telford federated with local under-performing school, Madeley Court, placing one of its deputies in charge. This has seen exam results improve and other schemes like this across the UK.

The school has been instrumental in setting up two other schools. These are in Walsall - Walsall Academy and Sandwell - both are now fully built and operational. These are headed by former Deputy Headteachers at Thomas Telford School.

[edit] Famous alumni

A handful of the school's alumni have gone on to achieve fame, nearly all of them sportsmen. The complete list is here;

[edit] References

  1. ^ Times Online
  2. ^ Newly-knighted head, Kevin Satchwell quizzed, BBC news online, 21st June 2001
  3. ^ Times Article
  4. ^ Guardian Article
  5. ^ Education Guardian New ICT qualifications branded 'too hard' or 'too soft', The Guardian online, 7 March 2006
  6. ^ The Prime Minister’s press conference on 23 January 2006, transcript published on the 10 Downing Street website

[edit] External links

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