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Last Year at SHS

Last year at SHS
The academic year ending in the summer of 2008 has been another year of achievement for Sheffield High School. In addition to our usual array of academic achievements, the School celebrated two excellent inspections during the year and the achievement of four national awards which recognise the School’s excellence in the Arts, international partnerships, environmental awareness and creating a culture of challenge and positive risk taking.

Continuing Success in Public Examinations
Our students achieved outstanding successes in public examinations. At A-level we enjoyed a 7th Year of a 100% pass rate with 80% of all the passes being at the tops grades of A or B. Almost half of the year group again achieved grade A in all of their subjects, with four girls achieving among the highest marks in the country.

Leavers Moving on to the Destinations of their Choice
The vast majority of our Year 13 students achieved places at their first choice university and moved on to a wide diversity of courses and universities. The School prides itself on encouraging every girl to pursue her own ambitions, whatever those ambitions might be.

Excellent GCSE Results
Our Year 11 girls did themselves and us proud with an excellent set of results. With almost 100% pass rate and 70% of the passes graded at A* or A, every one of them achieved their potential – no matter whether they achieved all As and A*s or whether them came away with a clutch of As, Bs and C grades.

Early GCSE Successes – from Year 5 upwards
Every year we have a number of girls who ask if they can be entered for a GCSE exam early and this year we had a number of girls who took language exams early, all achieving A*s. Special mention must go to Emily Hogg who achieved an A* in Japanese at the age of 10!

Two Very Successful Inspections
Although we know that Sheffield High School is an excellent school, it is nevertheless very satisfying to have this recognised by a team of inspectors who leave no stone unturned. The inspection of our Early Years Provision by OFSTED on the penultimate day of the Summer Term recorded a verdict of outstanding in every area, while the independent Schools Inspectorate praised the high quality educational experience which we provide. They judged a significant proportion of the teaching to be outstanding and praised in particular the effectiveness of our Pastoral System, the excellent relationships between girls and staff and among the girls themselves, the strong community spirit in school, the very effective partnership with parents and our excellent links with the local and wider community. For further information on these inspections, please visit Whole School Inspection (105.2 KB .pdf file) or to see a copy of the report for the Junior Department’s Ofsted inspection of Early Years’ provision, please visit Ofsted Early Years’ Inspection (61.4 KB .pdf file)

Sheffield High School ‘Goes for It!’
We are always looking at how we can move forward even further to ensure that we continue to equip all our girls for the challenges of life in the 21st Century. Above all, this means fostering in the girls the confidence which enables them to have a real sense of self-worth, so that they can approach their studies and their life in general with a sense of eagerness, expectation, enterprise and a desire to aim high and rise to every challenge. It is all of these characteristics which have been recognised by a prestigious award given to the school at the end of last academic year. The Go4It Award is an award presented each year to only a handful of schools in the country which encourage a positive “can do” approach in their pupils and provide a wide range of opportunities in creativity, enterprise, innovation and risk taking. Our bid for the award and the full day assessment, involved a group of girls from Y6 through to Sixth Form. The assessment took far longer than normal because the judges quite simply were so impressed by the girls and all they had to offer and wanted to hear more.

To read a copy of the assessor’s case study for the School, please click here (79 KB Word file)

Our International Dimension
Another of the national awards we received last year was the intermediate International Schools Award which recognises the wide range of global links the school now has and the opportunities we provide for visits abroad. We now have links with schools in France, Germany, Spain, USA, Bangladesh, India and Egypt and we have recently established a link with Shude High School, one of the top performing schools in Chengdu in the Sichuan province of China, which I visited with a delegation from Sheffield at Easter. We are looking forward to a visit from students and teachers from Shude High School later this month. Our links with China have been strengthened this year through the very successful Sports Tour to Beijing in October where our gymnasts, trampolinists and badminton players enjoyed seeing Beijing preparing for the Olympics and marvelled over the standard of their Chinese counterparts.

Student Summer School in China
We were also very privileged to be invited to send four students and three staff to take part in the joint HSBC / GDST China Summer School in Ningbo in June where they participated, with Chinese students, in a series of challenges aimed at developing leadership and teamwork skills. This was a life-changing trip for all of them.

Our Environmental Awareness
One of the topics which is high on the agenda for most schools nowadays and is a concern shared by many of the girls is that of the environment and sustainability. Our Deputy Head and a group of Sixth Form students set up an Eco Group at the start of last academic year to raise awareness of environmental issues in school and to produce an Action Plan which has included paper recycling, saving water and electricity and transport issues. The group was very pleased to achieve the Eco-Schools Bronze Award this year and they are now working towards the Silver award with every form having an Eco rep. Year 10 girls were invited by BP to take part in their Carbon Challenge looking at the effects of energy use and all aspects of saving energy.

Sheffield High Reaches the Gold Standard
Our final award of 2007-2008 – and one we have been working towards this award for 3 years, is the Artsmark Gold Award. This award is only achieved by a small number of schools nationally as schools must demonstrate an exceptionally high level of commitment and achievement in all areas of the arts from drama to music, design to literature and from dance to sculpture. This year three of our girls (Alison Drayton, Elizabeth Ann Warden and Jessica Dale) were chosen as Sheffield Young Painters of the Year, while in Literature ten Year 10 girls were selected to shadow the Sheffield Children’s Book Awards and twelve Year 8 girls shadowed the prestigious Carnegie Award. Every lunchtime the girls can enjoy a wide range of extra-curricular arts based clubs and I‘m now going to invite you to enjoy the arts in action with a short performance from Singers Club who will perform a medley for you from Wicked, inspired by a trip to London to see this Musical.

None of the achievements I have mentioned in this report could happen of course without the dedication and commitment of the staff and governors. I am very proud of the excellent staff we have at Sheffield High School and I would like to thank all of them – the Senior Management Team, the teaching and support staff for all they do for the girls and for the school. We were very sorry to say goodbye to three of our long serving teachers who retired at the end of the Summer Term. Mr Martin who was Head of Languages, Mrs Knight – in the Mathematics dept and Mr Harris who taught Economics and Politics. We also said goodbye to Mrs Beattie, Miss Henderson who has taken up a post of Curriculum Leader at St Bernard’s School Rotherham, Miss Knight who has moved to Notre Dame High School.

New Building Development for the Sixth Form
Every year since I joined Sheffield High School I have reported on new developments planned for the School and this year is no exception. Thanks to the continued generous investment from the Girls’ Day School Trust we are looking to expand our facilities even further this year with an extension to our Sixth Form building. The 2-storey extension to the rear of the Sixth Form Centre is scheduled to begin in November and will provide us with 5 additional teaching rooms, an Independent Learning Centre, a kitchen / diner and additional parking. This new building will ensure that we can accommodate our growing number of Sixth Form students comfortably and provide an environment which mirrors a university experience. I would like to thank at this point the Old Girls Association (SHOSA) and our Parents Associations (FOSH) who continue to work tirelessly for the school to organise social events and to raise additional funds for the school to help provide resources over and above those which are funded by school fees. I would also like to extend my thanks to all of you who contributed to the school’s annual fund last year which has enabled us to carry out refurbishment of our performance facilities in the Main School Hall as well as several smaller projects.

And finally, our History Club has been working on cataloguing the school’s archives this year. Two of the girls (Catherine Collett and Ella Greenfield Thomas) gave an excellent presentation to our Old Girls at their reunion in June. Catherine had found a copy of an old Inspection Report from 1969 which praised the school’s “purposeful and stimulating atmosphere”, “the happy, corporate spirit which exists within the school” and the “unstinting generosity of the staff”. I am very proud to say that more 40 years on, the inspection teams’ judgement of Sheffield High School is still just as positive and in 2007 the speak of a school which has a “strong community spirit” and which creates “a warm, stimulating and happy environment in which the girls enjoy learning and fulfil their potential”.

Valerie Dunsford

Headmistress
Sheffield High School