Upper Shirley High School - Principal's Welcome

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Principal's Welcome

An Introduction to USH

Cassie Ellins Principal

Welcome to Upper Shirley High School. As from January 3 2008 Bellemoor Boys School begins the transformation into a school accepting girls from September 2008. This is an exciting and momentous occasion for all of our community. Alongside the name change we also become a Foundation school at a point in time when we feel in the best position to completely manage our school in line with the needs of our community.

Following the secondary review by Southampton City Council our cluster arrangements were changed ensuring that Upper Shirley High serves the very local community rather than the wider city. This move provides new and exciting prospects in itself and has led to bonds being strengthened between all the local schools in the Upper Shirley Learning Community.

At Upper Shirley High we are committed to providing the very best possible education that we can for all of our students within a family setting. The individual really does matter to all of us and being the relatively small secondary school that we are, we know each and every person in our school community. Our tutor groups are organized vertically – that means we have students from each year group in them to ensure the older children support the younger ones. Within the House system of the school the vertical tutor groups work well and we have a real sense of family.

Every aspect of our school is improving. We are committed to ensuring that all lessons are challenging so that the learning of all students accelerates and their standards rise; and we will continue to evaluate the impact of all of our improvements to ensure they lead to even higher standards. We want every single young person in our community to achieve, or exceed, his/her own personal potential whilst developing into a well rounded capable adult on departure.

We are continuing to develop the school site to maximise the resources that we have. Throughout the next year there will be substantial building improvements as the school prepares for September 08. We anticipate a complete rebuild in the not too distant future being part of the exciting Building Schools for the Future programme.

This is an exciting time for our school and we hope that readers of this site can appreciate a little of what we all feel about Upper Shirley High. I hope that our website gives you a glimpse of our school and something of the enjoyment that students and staff experience here. We are happy for prospective parents to come and see us, by appointment, any time.

Cassie Ellins December 2007