Sunday Times Independent Secondary School of the Year 2010/2011!
Wycombe Abbey is delighted to have been awarded the accolade of Sunday Times Independent Secondary School of the Year, for the second time in seven years. This is the UK's top educational media award. The following is an extract from the Sunday Times:
Wycombe Abbey offers the best of the independent sector. The girls' boarding school, on the edge of High Wycombe, returned stellar exam results this year. With 90.5% of A Level entries at A* or A, 51.3% at the new A*grade, Wycombe Abbey rocketed to the top of our league table. And it was nearly a clean sweep at GCSE, with more than 99% of entries awarded A* or A - 84% at A*.
Led by head teacher Cynthia Hall, now in her third year of tenure, Wycombe Abbey places boarding at the heart of the school community. These days, many boarding schools encourage pupils to go home at weekends, or have large number of day boarders who stay at school late into the evening but then go home to sleep. Not so at Wycombe Abbey.
The school, which was founded in 1896 by educationalist Dame Frances Dove to give girls the opportunity of a Christian liberal education, has just 30 day pupils, all drawn from the local community, and with no plans to expand numbers. There are strict rules about the amount of time girls spend out.
“The idea of being a full boarding school and having a full community life is something the governors are absolutely committed to,” Mrs Hall says. “There are lots of staff at weekends on site, and that is because we want the girls present in the school on evening and weekends - we expect them to spend two thirds of the year living in school.
“What this means is that we have responsibility for their personal development and ethical judgement. It means we have to have strong community values because if there are disagreements – as there inevitably are - they have to be worked through within the community because the girls can't just walk away from them, particularly if they are sleeping in the same dorms or the same House.”
The House system is unusual at Wycombe Abbey. At 11, girls go into a Junior House, but from the age of 12 they move into one of the nine Senior Houses and sleep in mixed age dorms until they are 16. New pupils have an older girl acting as a House Mother, and friendships are established across the age range. Some girls take to mothering a younger girl naturally, some need guidance and some have to be encouraged to give their young charge breathing space. In the final year of schooling,UVIgirls move into a special House with their own study bedrooms and responsibility for some catering and laundry to familiarise themselves with university life.
Naturally enough, friendships are critically important for boarders, and the girls at Wycombe establish friendships for life. There is an enlightened attitude to communications with the free use of mobile phones (most of the girls have Blackberries or iPhones), although girls are not allowed to use them at night in the dorms and they are discouraged at mealtimes. “There is a balance between community life and the need to make phone calls,” says Mrs Hall, “and staff understand that.” Facebook is permitted and time invested in advising girls how to use it.
At Wycombe Abbey, rather than using tests to pan for the academic golden girls, 11-plus and 13-plus applicants are invited for a morning or an afternoon interview by the headmistress and take part in four or five lessons. Staff look for students who engage fully and are interested in the work they are presented with, as well as how they interact socially. School reports are critically important in the process. Musical girls are also invited to play their instruments. On the basis of such scrutiny, girls are made a provisional offer providing they achieve an average of just over 60% in the common entrance examination.
Set within 160 acres of grounds complete with woods, gardens and a lake, there are four applicants for every place (although some parents also apply for St Paul's Girls' School in London and make their decision once offers have been sent out). The popularity of the school is prompting Mrs Hall to consider introducing a pre test offered by Durham University to help with screening. (Lists are already closed for candidate seeking 11-plus and 13-plus entry in 2011.)
Understandably, many parents (who pay annual boarding fees of £29,250) are attracted to Wycombe Abbey by the outstanding results. About 30 school-leavers are expected to go on to Oxford and Cambridge - a success rate of about 50%. Another dozen or so go on to Ivy League colleges in America.
Sunday Times 14 November 2010
