Private School News

Caterham School Achieves Three Good School Guide Awards for Teaching Excellence at A Level

The Good Schools Guide has just announced their awards for 2007. Editor Ralph Lucas explained that 2007 awards were delayed as they rebuilt the systems that underlie the complex award process.

The aim of the awards is to highlight excellent teaching in individual subjects. The awards are based on A level results and in particular on the basis of the popularity of each subject relative to similar schools, and of the success that pupils achieve relative to the other examinations that they take.

This year the A level awards that Caterham School has won are:

~ Girls taking Human Biology at A level at an English School

~ Boys taking Human Biology at A level at an English School

~ Boys taking Physics at AS level at an English Independent School

The awards were begun in 2004 and Caterham has consistently won Good School Guide awards over the years.

Headmaster Julian Thomas said: ‘’Over the years we have won Good School Guide awards for a variety of subjects but this is the fourth consecutive year that the school has received awards for Biology and the third consecutive year that it has received an award for Physics. Naturally the teachers obtain a great deal of satisfaction from enabling the students to achieve their success but it is very rewarding that their efforts have been recognised by an independent organisation. Consistently excellent A level results mean that, whilst all our students go on to university, over 90% of pupils are able to accept a place at their first choice university with nearly 84% going to a top tier university.’’

Note: The Good Schools Guide was founded in 1985 by two parents in search of schools for their children. Over twenty years later there are 50 editors, writers, researchers and contributors – mostly parents but including some former Heads. The principles of the Guide are:
·to be independent in judgements of schools, and to take no money from them directly or indirectly;
·to view schools from a parent’s point of view, and to choose schools for the Guide on the basis of what parents say about them;
·to define good schools as schools that are good for the children and parents that they serve, and not to be too influenced by academic results alone.