Henry Beaufort School

The Henry Beaufort School

Motto	"Believe and Achieve"
Established	1971 (1971)
Type	Community Comprehensive
Headteacher	Miss Sue Hearle
Deputy Headteacher	Jon Hicks, John Howells
Location	East Woodhay Road Winchester Hampshire SO22 6JJ England Coordinates: 51°04′51″N 1°19′49″W / 51.0809°N 1.3302°W / 51.0809; -1.3302
Local authority	Hampshire
DfE number	850/4174
DfE URN	116438 Tables
Ofsted	Reports
Capacity	1100
Students	1004 As of January 2014
Gender	Mixed
Ages	11–16
Colours	Royal Blue
Publication	Beaufort News[1]
Website	www.beaufort.hants.sch.uk

Henry Beaufort School, is a secondary school in Harestock, a suburb of Winchester, in the county of Hampshire in England.

About the school

The school was built in 1971 as the first purpose-built, co-educational, comprehensive school in Winchester, to serve the new developments created by the new Teg Down, Weeke Manor and Harestock estates. In the first year of opening the school had a full complement of year 7 children and about half a year 8 complement. The school grew each year until 1975 it had a full 5 years of intake. The first headmaster was Mr Hubert who remained headmaster until 1990 when he retired. He was replaced by Mr D. Dickinson who was head for about 10 years. He left in 2000 and was replaced by Mr Jonathan de Sausmarez. The current Headteacher is Ms Sue Hearle.

Initially, each year was divided into 6 tutor groups H, R, E, S, T and O, taken from `Harestock', the suburb of Winchester in which it is located. The `A' was missed out as a tutor group to avoid any suggestion that it was made up of superior students.

Today it is divided into seven tutors: Athens, Berlin, Luxembourg, Moscow, Prague, Rome and Warsaw. All tutors currently use vertical tutoring, after Henry Beaufort decided it would encourage trust between students of different years. There is an annual sports day which is held midway through July and the students are encouraged to participate in sport and eat healthily as the school has the Healthy Schools status. The school runs the Beaufort Bistro which serves hot and cold food and drink priced between £0.40 and £2 before school, during break and during lunch.

Henry Beaufort runs free bus services to many of the surrounding catchment areas both before and after school, with out-of-catchment buses also available for a fee. A later bus is also provided for those taking part in after-school clubs (for which a fee of 50p is charged for those not already paying for out-of-catchment transport).^[2] Henry Beaufort has many awards Including Technology and Humanities College status. At the start of the spring term in 2011, Miss Sue Hearle replaced Mr Jonathan de Sausmarez as headteacher at the school and remains so today. The school also has an Artsmark Gold award and was rated 'good' by Ofsted in their most recent inspection.

Academic Performance

Across all students, 58% will achieve 5 A*-C grades including English and Maths.^[3] According to Government League Table data from 2014, The Henry Beaufort School is within the top 50 schools in Hampshire sorted by their A*-C achievement percentage^[4]

Refurbishments

2009 refurbishment^[5]

In January 2009 most buildings were refurbished, including exterior and interiors. This included painting the building in the new navy blue and white as opposed to the pale blue and black before it. The school was also looking forward to a new Astroturf pitch. Construction for said pitch started in June 2009 and is now completed.

2013-14 refurbishment

The largest of the schools buildings known as "Tower Block" housing the languages and humanities departments started a refit in 2012. The two departments were required to move to temporary buildings at the top of the site whilst work was taking place, but have now returned to the newly refurbished building. Work on the block was completed in March 2014.

Handbooks and Stamps

Pupils are given handbooks (commonly referred to as planners throughout the school community) when they join the school, with new ones being re-issued every year. These handbooks provide the students with information about various school rules, notable dates, and most importantly track student's lesson 'stamps'. At the end of every lesson a student who has done an amount of work that the teacher deems suitable will be given a stamp (usually with the department and teacher also marked) as a record of their presence and contribution. In the event of a breach of conduct such as truanting, failure to follow instructions or lack of homework, a 'number code' from one to five will be written in place of the stamp for that lesson (this will be deduced from the 'stamp total' used by the school as a measure of progress and attendance throughout the year). Consequentially in the event of behaviour that a teacher deems going beyond what is required and improving the general ethos of the school they will be awarded an extra/additional stamp in a section of the planner dedicated to this. Special events such as a recent 'Revision Week', dedicated to learning additional methods of recalling information, also hold a stamp reward for participating.

Enrichment Week

For one week of the school period (usually the 14th to the 19th of July) students will be taken out of normal lessons to have a week of extra-curricular activities selected before-hand.^[6] To ensure that students who have repetitively not achieved the required learning targets or performed extensive disruptive behavior, a minimum number of 'Stamps' is required to attend the activities. Students not reaching this target will have to attend normal lessons throughout the week.

Examples of activities the school has run in the past include:

• Geocaching
• Trips abroad (Germany, France, America)
• Sports workshops (Football coaching)
• Drama productions (Built up over the course of the week and then performed at the end)
• Art workshops
• Stop-motion photography and animation
• Music video creation (Including a trip to the BBC)

The school has made it clear that the week is a normal part of their school's schedule, and not attending school during the period is considered an unauthorized absence as per standard regulations.

PE Department Twitter Trial

The Henry Beaufort School PE Department has recently introduced the use of Twitter as a method to communicate with students and parents (@HenryBeaufortPE).^[7]

References

• http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/1308 NewsWireless.net - Wireless turns school into UK technology college, but ... by Guy Kewney, posted on 1 September 2002

External links

• A history of the school from a Weeke perspective