Culcheth High School
 Culcheth High School Logo | |
| Motto | Learning for Life |
|---|---|
| Established | 1931 |
| Type | Secondary Comprehensive with Sixth Form |
| Interim Headteacher | Mr C P Hunt |
| Location |
Warrington Road Culcheth, Cheshire WA3 5HH England Coordinates: 53°27′19″N 2°30′27″W / 53.455375°N 2.507593°W |
| Local authority | Warrington |
| Gender | Mixed |
| Ages | 11–19 |
| Website | culchethhigh.org.uk |
Culcheth High School is a comprehensive school catering for students aged 11–19, located in Warrington, Cheshire. It serves much of the surrounding areas with a student base of around 1200 students. In 2010, it opened a brand new £28 million campus, combining the High School, Sixth Form and Community Campus in one state of the art building.
Location
Culcheth High School is located in Culcheth, Warrington. Culcheth is a large village in Cheshire approximately 6 miles (10 km) north-east of Warrington, England and historically it lay within the County of Lancashire. It is the principal settlement in Culcheth and Glazebury civil parish. The village has many amenities which make it a popular place to live. These include a library, a village hall, sports facilities, two supermarkets, and a wide range of smaller shops clustered in and around its centre. It has several restaurants, cafes, pubs and takeaways. It is primarily residential, with a large village green at its heart where the annual Community Day is held.
History
When the school first opened in 1931 it was a single block, formerly known as 'A Block'. Over the years several other blocks were opened as the school expanded. The most recent block built was 'G Block'.
In 2007, Roseanne Banner broke school records when she achieved 12 A* GCSE grades, becoming a beacon to all who followed in her footsteps. She also achieved a top 5 mark across the U.K. in her English Literature GCSE.
In 2010 when the new school campus was completed, all but one block of the old school was demolished, G block. G Block went up for sale with the intent for use as a community building.
Facilities
The school has state-of-the-art facilities for teaching and recording of music, with two suites of electronic instruments linked up to mac minis and a recording studio. For sports the school has: a large multi-use sports hall; an activity studio for use with dance/gym/trampolines; an AstroTurf pitch for all year round football and several rugby pitches and cricket strip. A full array of science labs, technology suites and ICT rooms can be found on all levels throughout the school. The school also operates a full wireless network, for use with laptops in each department, and interactive ICT resources in every classroom. On the ground level, an open-plan restaurant and cafe allows students to socialise at break and lunch.
Being a community campus, the school also boasts a gym, run by Livewire, and several community rooms which can be hired out by local groups and the community.
Sixth Form
Culcheth High School has a relatively small sixth form (124 students in 2012).
Ofsted
Culcheth High School provides a good education for its students and has improved since its last inspection. Students achieve well and all groups of learners, including those with learning difficulties and/or disabilities, make good progress. The consistent rise in attainment at GCSE over the last three years led to Culcheth High being identified as one of the 'most improved schools' in 2008. A much higher than average proportion of Key Stage 4 students gained five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C including English and mathematics.
Teaching and learning are good overall and a good proportion of lessons is outstanding. Strong features of teaching include excellent relationships with students and presentations that capture and sustain students' interest. Teachers have good subject knowledge which most use creatively to plan stimulating lessons which maintain a strong ethos for learning. Literacy, numeracy and ICT are taught well, ensuring that most students reach high standards in these key skills. An outstanding history lesson contained all these features as the teacher created a real buzz in the classroom through skilful interventions as groups of students researched significant factors resulting in the great plague. A good example of the impact of the school's specialism was also seen in a physics lesson where students had chances to consider how, in the past, important scientists had their theories accepted or rejected by the scientific community of the day.
Uniform
Culcheth High School's uniform consists of a black blazer embroidered with the school badge, a plain white school shirt, the school tie and black shoes. Black trousers for the boys, and black shirt/trousers for the girls. The schools badge holds the traditional eagle, that the school adopted when it first opened in 1931, with a modern look. The school tie is black, with the eagle and two blue stripes.
Up until 2009, the schools logo was the original gold eagle, stitched on the schools blazer and embroidered on the tie with gold stripes.
