Great Sankey High School

Great Sankey High School (GSHS) is a coeducational secondary school and sixth form with academy status, located in Warrington, Cheshire, England. It is a member of the Omega Multi-Academy Trust (OMAT). The school was first built in the 1970s and extensions have included a mathematics & humanities block and theatre. The school also has a linking leisure centre and arts theatre. GSHS has been awarded, and retained, an Artsmark Gold award, the highest award for the Arts.

Great Sankey High School
Address
Great Sankey High School
Great Sankey High School
Great Sankey High School
Barrowhall Lane

Warrington
,
Cheshire
,
WA5 3AA

 United Kingdom
Coordinates53.401°N 2.662°W / 53.401; -2.662
Information
TypeAcademy
MottoGreat in name, greatest together
Religious affiliation(s)Mixed
Established1970s
Department for Education URN139152 Tables
OfstedReports
Head teacherJon Wright and John Shannon
Staffc. 200
GenderCoeducational
Age11 to 18
Enrolmentc. 2000
HousesAusten, Bannister, Newton, Parks, Stephenson, Thompson
Colour(s)Black & Green
PublicationContact Magazine
Websitehttp://www.greatsankey.org

GSHS is partnered with South Peninsula High School in Cape Town, South Africa.[1]

In 2010, GSHS was classified as an Outstanding school by Ofsted.[2] The school converted to academy status in January 2013. In October 2017, the school was reclassified by Ofsted as a Good school.[3]

Extensions

A new purpose-built sixth-form college was opened on the school site in September 2011 by Alan Yates (former Headteacher) and Simon Moran (Managing Director of SJM Concerts).

In December 2019, the new PE hall was opened by current headteacher John Shannon on the site of what used to be the neighbouring primary school, Barrow Hall Primary School, along with a diner in use for the Year 7’s that was completed in January of 2019. The new science block containing 11 laboratories that was built on the same construction site was opened in February 2020. The plans for taking the schools grounds were confirmed by previous headteacher, Paula Crawley, when Barrow Hall Primary School relocated to a close area.

Uniform

The uniform is a white shirt, black trousers or skirt, black blazer with school badge attached and correct tie, differing per house team. The compulsory P.E kit is a black polo shirt for all, a black and white rugby shirt for boys, and either black shorts or black tracksuit bottoms, and optional socks.

Specialisms

In 2004, the school was awarded specialist schools status in the field of Engineering and has since increased the provision of Engineering throughout the curriculum. The school also operates a Young Apprentice scheme, where Year 10 students have the opportunity to Start a two-year course and earn an NVQ level 2 with the school.

In a partnership with the RAC, the school has built an RAC automotive engineering skills centre. This allows students studying engineering and automotive engineering, access to Facilities that few other engineering colleges possess, whilst also providing facilities for other schools and businesses in the local community.[4]

The school has a VEX robotics team called BHCVEX as part of the Engineering department. The team first initiated in 2010 when the team also won their first trophy in a regional competition using the Standard VEX Protobot and Tumbler kit.[5] In 2012 the team participated in the VEX robotics UK national competition and won the competition, qualifying them for the world finals in California, However due to insufficient funds the team could not attend.[6] Sack attack is the 2012-2013 season game, different from the 2011-2012 Gateway game. BHCVEX were finalists in the North West regional in the 2012-2013 season, which qualified them for the 2013 UK national competition where they won the tournament in alliance with two other teams from East Barnet School qualifying the team for the world championships in Anaheim.[7]

Sport

The school has many teams participating in sports such as football, rugby league, hockey, netball, basketball, cricket, badminton, athletics and Handball. [8]

On 24 August 2019, Great Sankey High School’s Year 7 Rugby team won the Champion Schools Final against Standish High School at Wembley Stadium.

Music

The school has two main bands that perform regularly in the local area and abroad, in locations such as Italy, France, Spain and Germany and have played in the UK in London (Covent Garden) and Warrington train station (where they played for the Duke of Edinburgh). In the past, the Concert Band has achieved a silver medal at international level competing against some of the best school and college bands from all around the world. More recently, the Concert Band has achieved a gold award at the regional seris of the National Concert Band Festival (2008), held at GSHS, and were invited to play at the 2009 national finals in Cardiff where they achieved a highly commended bronze award. The Swing Band (run by Mr Bryan) competed in Warwick at the national finals last year after gaining a gold medal at the regional series in 2007.

Both bands performed by formal invitation on the Fantasy Festival Stage at Disneyland Park, Paris, in summer 2008, 2012 and 2014. GSHS also has a choir (Sankey Singers [run by Mrs Meredith]). Sankey Singers have performed for the past two years in the regional rounds of the National Festival of Music for Youth, in 2012, they performed in the second stage of the festival, in Birmingham. They also joined the Swing Band for their 2014 performance in Disneyland. The music department also hold an open music event, The Great 'S' Factor, each year and several smaller casual bands, performing a wide variety of music.

House system

The school implemented a house system in the academic year beginning September 2007 to ease the strain on the heads of years, who previously had been allocated one year of students and had to manage all these students throughout their 5 year attendance at Great Sankey High School. It was decided that each house would have two forms from each year, and there would be twelve forms for each year group. Each head of house would then only have to manage 10 forms instead of 12, and each would only have to manage two year 11 forms at one time, instead of a head of year looking after all year 11 forms. Learners gain House Points for attending extra-curricular activities and going above and beyond the call of duty in lessons.

Members of each house can be identified by their ties, featuring their house colours. The new ties, which were designed by learners, are being implemented from September 2009. Students are issued with house coloured planners and attend "House Assemblies". Sports day and other interhouse competitions are regularly organised each term, and at the end of the year, the top achievers from each house win a trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

Each year, two year eleven students are chosen as House Captains and help in the running and organization of their house. Introduced in September 2014, two year ten students get the opportunity to become Deputy House Captains.

In December 2019, the school announced that its House Office Team by bringing in one Head for Newton House, six new deputy heads for all houses and three new house officers for Austen, Parks and Thompson Houses. This took place after the holidays, in January 2020, moving the team into temporary places for each house until a bigger area for the House Office Team is accommodated.

The school has six houses, each with their own colours, named after people who have been influential and excelled at what they have done:

The houses also partner up based on alphabetical order. Austen and a Bannister are partner houses, along with Newton and Parks, and Stephenson and Thompson Houses.


Notable former pupils
gollark: Fortunately the fusion reactors, when they do work, produce so much power that they can charge giant batteries, so we mostly just use those.
gollark: At the Unicode Consortium, which is better than heavpoot's W3C, we continuously run into fusion reactor failures, so I made more fusion reactors with a simpler system as a backup, but they failed too.
gollark: I'm actually on the same sever heavpoot is on right now and trying frantically to repotatonate the fusion reactor.
gollark: Mr pronouns are [REDACTED]/[DATA EXPUNGED].
gollark: 512GHz.

References
  1. Stubbs, L (11 July 2017). "Great Sankey Welcomes South Peninsula". Great Sankey High School. Retrieved 22 May 2019.
  2. "Ofsted Report 2010", www.greatsankey.org.
  3. "Ofsted Report: Great Sankey High School". Ofsted - Great Sankey High School.
  4. "RAC's automotive training centre officially opens at Great Sankey". Aviva Media Centre. Aviva. 4 November 2008. Retrieved 8 January 2012.
  5. "Success for Warrington in robot contest". Warrington Guardian reporter. Warrington Guardian. 5 July 2010. Retrieved 24 November 2012.
  6. "Robot events, UK national 2012". VEX Robotics. VEX Robotics. 14 March 2012. Archived from the original on 3 May 2014. Retrieved 24 November 2012.
  7. "Robot events, UK North West region 2012-2013 season". VEX Robotics. VEX Robotics. 21 November 2012. Retrieved 24 November 2012.
  8. "Carnegie Champion Schools". www.therfl.co.uk. Retrieved 19 August 2008.
  9. "Stoke City: Liam Lindsay, Adam Davies, Jordan Cousins, Nick Powell & Lee Gregory join Potters". BBC Sport. 25 June 2019.
  10. "Rhys Evans".
  11. "Andrew Gower". IMDB. Retrieved 17 February 2018.
  12. "Million Pound Game: Hull KR 18-19 Salford Red Devils". BBC Sport. 1 October 2016.
  13. "Paralympics 2012: Richard Whitehead wins 200m gold for GB".
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