Sacred Heart High celebrates new specialist school status

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Sacred Heart High School, in Hammersmith, has been named among 219 new specialist schools in the country by the government.

The school has become a maths and computing (ICT) specialist school - enabling improvements to the curriculum, staffing and facilities at Sacred Heart, which will be shared with other schools and the community.

Sacred Heart High already has specialist training status and has been helping to train new teaching staff and teachers at other stages of their careers since last September. The school has also been a beacon school since 1998, sharing good practice with other schools in this and other boroughs.

Sacred Heart’s reputation for academic excellence was confirmed this month when it was ranked joint 20th in the country for the difference it makes to pupils from the ages of 11 to 16 (the ‘value added’ measure of improvement) in the annual GCSE performance tables.
It joins a growing number of specialist schools in Hammersmith & Fulham, which are helping to raise standards in areas ranging from maths, science and computing to languages, with the help of about £100,000 extra a year each from the government over four years.

Dr Christine Carpenter, headteacher of Sacred Heart High School, said: “The extra resources will go into staffing to be used in the departments in our specialist areas. This will help raise the achievement of pupils here and enable us to work with other schools and the community in maths and ICT. In ICT we expect to take innovative teaching and learning into all areas of the curriculum, including introducing video conferencing. Some of our extra capital will go towards making part of our building available to the community both during and after school.”

Cllr David Williams, deputy for education, said: “Sacred Heart High School is already a centre of excellence and I am delighted that the school has been given a further opportunity to continue to raise standards and share their impressive experience and resources with other schools and the community.”

The borough’s other specialist schools are Fulham Cross (languages), Lady Margaret (maths and ICT) and Phoenix High (science and maths).

 

January 30, 2005