The past year was another very successful one. The acknowledgement in his annual report by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools of our outstanding OFSTED report was followed by the designation of ‘Leading Edge’ status in June 2003. This was indeed a recognition of the reputation of the school for its innovative work in teaching and learning, as exemplified by the success of its ‘in house’ training packages, vocational training for South East Northumberland teachers and lecturers and a second very successful national conference.

The Gatsby Foundation continued to invest in our expertise, commissioning us to train teachers and advisers and write modules in Science (14-19) and Maths (post 16) using a modified accelerated learning model. Their additional financial support has allowed us to appoint an Advanced Skills Teacher and to contribute some time from two colleagues new to the programme.

In other ways, the school also moved forward; the SAT results were the best ever and for the second year running we broke the 70% mark for GCSE.

The transformation of our social block into a ‘Discovery Zone’ to house a new training centre and our Learning 2 Learn course exemplified our determination to strive towards being 

“a world class school epitomised by its innovative approach which puts teaching and learning at its core and combines the best form of teaching and learning with ICT”.

As a further consequence, our planning contains an ambitious way forward for the development of ICT; deploying interactive whiteboards in all classrooms is just the first step.