Sir James Smith's School

Sir James Smith's Community School
Motto Aspiration. Ambition. Achievement
Established 1679
Type Comprehensive
Headteacher Jon Lawrence
Founder Sir James Smyth
Location Dark Lane
Camelford
Cornwall
PL32 9UJ
England
Coordinates: 50°37′18″N 4°41′04″W / 50.62170°N 4.68434°W / 50.62170; -4.68434
Local authority Cornwall Council
DfE URN 112039 Tables
Ofsted Reports
Staff 60
Students 543
Gender Coeducational
Ages 11–17
Houses Chydeme, Tredeme, Poldeme & Landeme
Colours Black and Red
Website www.sirjamessmiths.cornwall.sch.uk

Sir James Smith's Community School (formerly Sir James Smith's School) is a small secondary school located in the town of Camelford, North Cornwall, England. The headteacher is Jon Lawrence, who succeeded Angela Perlmutter in January 2007.

History

Founded as a grammar school in 1679, at a property overlooking the town, the school has been state run since 1962 when it moved to Dark Lane. It was the first purpose-built comprehensive school in Cornwall. Until July 1962 it was Sir James Smith's Grammar School at College Road and no secondary modern school existed for the district. The new school at Dark Lane was designed by the county architect, F. K. Hicklin, and Kenneth Sprayson continued to be headmaster. (The school building at College Road was built about 1879 and extended twice before being vacated and used as offices for the rural district council.)

Geography

The catchment area for Sir James Smith's is largely rural and covers an extensive and sparsely populated district of north Cornwall, stretching along the coast from Crackington Haven to Boscastle, Tintagel, and Port Isaac. Inland Delabole, St Teath and St Breward and the isolated hamlets and farmsteads of Bodmin Moor are included. This area is one of the most economically deprived in the EU. Available employment is frequently part-time and/or seasonal and the average wage is the lowest in the UK; whereas property and living costs are among the highest.

21st century

The school has 543 pupils aged 11–16 (as of 2011). It is one of the smallest state secondary schools in the UK. For comparison, neighbouring secondary schools have between 1200 - 2100 pupils aged 11–16 and 200+ sixth formers.

The last decade has seen an extension to the adult education building; the Salon United for careers in hair and beauty therapy (2007); the West End music and drama suite (2004); a new reception and office suite (2003); a new Mathematics block (2001) and The Princess of Wales Design Centre (Arts and Technology) (1992). The school is undergoing further building work to facelift sections of the exterior (whose concrete facade has not aged well).

In 2005 Sir James Smith's School became the first specialist humanities college in Cornwall.

In October 2007 it was announced that the school's Sixth Form block would be closing with immediate effect. No new students were to be admitted in the following September. The news was greeted with grave concern among many teachers, students, parents and locals. Year 12 will be permitted to finish their studies at the school. Future year 11 graduees will henceforth have to travel to other Sixth Form centres at Wadebridge, Bude or Truro College.[1]

The super-speedy Greenpower team from Sir Jim’s are now International Champions (2015) – after a superb weekend of kit car racing at the Rockingham Motor Speedway track in Corby. The team powered their way to the Greenpower International Finals after battling in style against opposition in local and regional heats. At Rockingham, over a weekend of racing, the team members triumphed over not only home-grown British kit car rivals, but also teams from around the world, from America to Poland and South Africa to Ireland.

The team, who have worked on their car, the ‘Retro Rocket’, since January 2015, returned to Cornwall with an array of trophies, medals and winners’ wreaths. Not only was theirs the first kit car home in the final, they also then won the endurance race, totting up the most overall mileage. Their aim was to travel as far as possible in one and a half hours, swapping drivers every half hour, and conserving enough battery energy to gain the most mileage at the best speed.

The jubilant team comprised current and past students from Sir Jim’s. Greenpower was brought to the school for the first time this year, and praise must be given to the positive attitude of the team, who overtook their rivals on the last lap to win one of their trophies. It's also highlighted how beneficial the whole project is, encompassing subjects such as mathematics, science, engineering and technology, in the building and driving of the kit car.

School day

The school is different from the majority of schools in the region and the UK, as it finishes early. However, the school day includes five one-hour lessons:

Uniform

The school uniform was changed in 2011 and now consists of:

Until the change in colours the school uniform included a bottle green sweatshirt (with the school emblem, a red camel, embroidered on the top left of it). Earlier uniforms also used the school colours of green and red and the camel emblem.

In 2001 a protest by students, requesting that shorts to be added to the uniform, resulted in many being locked out of the school. As of 2009, shorts have been added to the uniform. In 2007, a redesigned physical education kit was introduced, consisting of a blue shirt with a black horizontal band.

Deme system

In 2004 the deme system was introduced: Deme being a Latin term for a house or group. The first elements of the names are derived from common place-name elements in Cornish: chy (house), tre (farmstead), pol (pool), and lan (originally an enclosure, but in placenames usually combined with the name of a saint to refer to a church). The demes are equivalent to the house system followed by many neighbouring schools. (A division into Drake House (green) and Wallis House (red) was in existence at one time in the grammar school; then Bottreaux, Carew, Grenville and Molesworth houses in the comprehensive school.) An in-school competition followed to name them: those selected were all from the Cornish language, with deme added to the end. Despite the recent adoption, some demes have already attained distinctive characteristics: Tredeme, for example, have a reputation for academic prowess whereas a stereotypical Landeme student would be expected to excel in sport. This is frequently changing and varies among year groups as people join and leave the school.

At the end of the term in 2008 at the deme presentation awards ceremony Tredeme were announced as the winners of the award for best deme in the 2007-2008 term. This was the first time since the introduction of the deme system back in 2004 that Tredeme won the award.

Magazine

The pupils produced a school magazine in the 1950s and 1960s called The Camel: the issues for 1957-1962 are numbered Vol. I, no. VI - XI and 1964 is not numbered.

Notable former pupils

References

  1. ↑
  2. ↑ ‘COLMAN, (Bernard) Trevor’, Who's Who 2015, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2015; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014 ; online edn, Oct 2014 accessed 2 Dec 2014
  3. ↑ ‘POOLEY, Dr Derek’, Who's Who 2015, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2015; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014 ; online edn, Oct 2014 accessed 2 Dec 2014
  4. ↑ ‘ROWE, Jennifer, (Mrs J. Ellis)’, Who's Who 2015, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2015; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014 ; online edn, Oct 2014 accessed 2 Dec 2014

External links

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