We are delighted to share with you our 2017 AS and A-Level Results for 2017. These were our best results since 2011 at KS5 and we are delighted that so many of our students in Year 12 and Year 13 were able to achieve so highly! Well done to all involved, so much hard work went into achieving these superb results! 74 of our Y13 students got their first or second choice and we wish them well in the adventures ahead.

We had an amazing 15 students from Year 7 and Year 8 selected to represent Aldershot and Districts Schools Athletics team at the Hampshire Track and Field Championships last Tuesday , they were invited  due to their outstanding efforts at the District Championships two weeks ago. They all competed brilliantly in very wet conditions and contributed to Aldershot winning all four age categories on the day. We had some individual achievements too! We are very fortunate to have two County Champions Harry Ware in the U13  600m and Ed Webb for U13 Discus, however all the athletes performed very well on a very dark and wet day and all should be so very proud of there achievements.

We have long held the view that we should offer a curriculum that is best for our students and not one that is tailored to the league tables. For this reason, we still offer the same range of subjects in the curriculum at Key Stage 3 that we always have done and we still allocate three years for this. We believe that this allows students to make better informed choices for their GCSEs and also better equips them for their future lives. We have also maintained our breadth of choice at GCSE.

How refreshing, even if surprising, to have this liberal view of education supported by the new Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman, who in a speech to the Association of School and College Leaders said a number of things, including:

• “All children should study a broad and rich curriculum. Curtailing key stage three means prematurely cutting this off for children who may never have an opportunity to study some of these subjects again.”
• “Ofsted will closely monitor schools that chase meaningless “badges and stickers” and turn themselves into exam factories rather than offering a well-rounded education”

This puts her at odds with the Department of Education who have set accountability measures that inevitably have led to the narrowing of curriculums in many schools. We, of course, want all of our students to do well in their exams for their own good, not just for the reputation of the school.

We subscribe to the GCSEPod service which students can stream or download short podcasts on all aspects of our GCSE subjects, tailored to the exam board we use.

This year, our students have watched over 30,000 podcasts, an increase of 4,800 compared to last year. We received a certificate from GCSEpod a while back, when we reached 25,000, telling us that we were part of an exclusive club. Marvellous. What we do know is that our students watch many more than the average for students in schools of our size. This is a testament to their commitment and dedication

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