Welcome to Woodchurch High School

Dear Parents and Carers

I am delighted that you are considering Woodchurch High School for your child. We are an extremely successful 11-16 co-education comprehensive school with over 1,300 pupils on roll, supported by 200 teaching and support staff, resulting in small class sizes and greater personalisation of learning.

Woodchurch High School is an extremely popular school, attributable to it’s ‘Established Excellence’ in every aspect; including leadership and management, pupil progress and attainment. In addition, there is an ordered, disciplined environment, and extremely positive relationships within the school, and with parents / carers and the local community.

At Woodchurch High School, we always place pupils at the centre of all we do and this has been reflected in our last four Ofsted Inspection reports – ‘Excellent’ 1999, ‘Outstanding’ 2005, ‘Outstanding’ 2008 and ‘Outstanding’ 2009 – a significant achievement!

In addition, we have achieved numerous external awards in recognition of our outstanding practices. Nevertheless, we are always seeking ways to constantly build upon our ‘Established Excellence’.

We have been a Specialist Engineering College for eight years which has further strengthened our links with parents / carers, the community and local businesses.

As a High Performing Specialist School, we were delighted to be awarded ‘Training School Status’ in April 2009. As a Training School we are now in the privileged position of being able to share our expertise and excellent practice with other schools, agencies and the wider community.

Woodchurch High is committed to providing the best possible education for all our pupils and we work in partnership with parents to achieve this goal. “The staff are exceptional and strive to get the best out of our children; the pupils couldn’t have gone to a more supportive school. It motivates and encourages its pupils to succeed in everything they do and definitely lives up to its outstanding reputation.” (‘At typical positive comment from a parent’. OFSTED March 2008.)

We have high expectations of our pupils and believe strongly in the use of praise and rewards for pupils who work hard and show a positive attitude to school. We demand high standards of behaviour, both inside and outside of school, in order to ensure that a disciplined and ordered environment for learning exists and that the school’s excellent reputation is maintained.

Success in public examinations is important, as these are the qualifications which are required for further and higher education, as well as for employment opportunities. Our excellent results and the improvements we have sustained in recent years reflect our ability to successfully prepare our pupils for the next phase of their lives. Our pupils make excellent progress, regardless of their starting point; they tell the staff that they like their school and are proud to be part of Woodchurch High School.

To ensure that all our pupils succeed, an extensive enrichment programme is provided including a breakfast club and a homework club. There are additional lessons at lunchtime, after school and during holidays.

We are extremely proud to be an inclusive school, able to meet the needs of pupils with a physical and / or medical impairment, in addition to catering for pupils with Aspergers Syndrome.

The inclusion of these pupils into our school community helps to develop the caring supportive ethos which permeates all our school life. During recent years we have received visitors from all over the country and from abroad, who are keen to learn from our experiences and procedures regarding inclusion.

This year is an extremely exciting time to join Woodchurch High School, as in September 2010 we will move into our £25 million state of the art new building. We were delighted to be chosen as the Wirrals BSF Single Pathfinder School, because of our consistently high standards, performance and inclusive practices.

The new school will not only improve the educational opportunities of our new pupils, but cater for the needs of the wider community.

I hope you will enjoy reading our prospectus and our Ofsted report. Better still, come and see for yourselves. You are very welcome to visit during a normal working day. Please ring the school and appropriate arrangements will be made for myself or my senior staff to welcome you to the school. We look forward to meeting you and your child in the near future.

Yours sincerely

Ms R Phillips

Headteacher