Vyners School

Vyners School is a secondary school and sixth form in Ickenham within the London Borough of Hillingdon. Since November 2011 the school has academy status, and specialises in mathematics and computing.

The current headteacher is Mr James M Heale, who took over in September 2012.^[1]

History

Vyners Grammar School opened as a grammar school on 12 January 1960, under Headmaster Trevor Jagger, later becoming a comprehensive. Delays in building work meant the first intake of pupils were taught at St Mary's Grammar School in Northwood Hills from 9 September 1959.^[2] The project received help from John Miles (the headmaster of Abbotsfield School at the time), and one of the houses is now named after him.

The grammar school is named after Sir Robert Vyner, a former Lord Mayor of London who lived at the nearby Swakeleys House for a time.^[3]

The previous Head teacher was Susan Gould, who took over on 1 September 2007 from Brian Houghton.^[4] She announced her resignation from the post in the summer of 2012. During her time at the school, Ofsted results declined, with Vyners possessing a 'Satisfactory' rating.^[5]

Traditions

The school has six houses, all with meaning to the school's history. They are: Cheshire, Fry, Gell, Huxley, John Miles and Windsor. Of these, Cheshire and Gell were added to the original four, after 1983 when the school expanded.

The school came up with the motto 'Abide in me', taken from the Gospel of John Ch. 13, verse 7, and which is displayed below the school crest. The school has the theme of "service", which mainly comes from the founders and is reflected in the people chosen for the house names (the school did not start with six forms of entry upon opening - throughout the 60's and into the 70's, it had a four form entry).

Sport

Sporting successes in the past have included successive English Schools Senior Netball Championships - 1970 and 1971; a British Athletics International, Mark Naylor, who held the British National Record in the high jump and competed in the Moscow and Los Angeles Olympic Games, a British Youth Shot Putt champion [1970], trained by 'Pete' Ferguson, who also taught Latin and English Literature, and married an Art teacher; as well as numerous Borough and County Championships, team and individual, plus Borough and County representatives at football, netball, athletics, rugby union, and other sports.

Vyners Swing Band

The Vyners Swing Band was set up in 1988 by history teacher Perry Parsons MBE to give some students at Vyners School the opportunity to enjoy and perform jazz while increasing their self-confidence. The plan was to bring together about ten musicians with a varied competence in music to play some Jazz, Dixieland or Glenn Miller style arrangements and very quickly the band increased in size to around twenty five players.

The first 'performance' was at the annual House Music Festival in March 1988 and has gone from strength to strength. Large and small ensembles from the VSB have played more than 325 gigs since 1988 and raised in excess of £50,000 for a variety of charities, as well as entertaining audiences both local and further afield including successful tours of France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany.

Roy Castle joined the band for a one-off concert in 1991 to raise money for the Chiltern and Hillingdon Cheshire Homes charity.^[2]

A one off performance in 2000 featuring "guitar piano trumpet" connoisseur David Twallin, propelled the VSB to West London notoriety for a brief period of time.

Notable former pupils

• Mark Naylor, Athlete
• Julia Bleasdale, Athlete
• former Football Icon winner Sam Hurrell^[6]
• Kye Sones, Former X-Factor Contestant

 Andy Reay(professional rugby player) 

Vyners Grammar School

• Sue Cook, TV presenter
• Lorraine Heggessey, TV producer

References

External links

• Official site
• Daily Telegraph list of English Schools' Netball Champion Teams

Coordinates: 51°33′31″N 0°27′42″W / 51.5585°N 0.4618°W / 51.5585; -0.4618