Changes Agreed

Significant changes to the school week, curriculum and timetable organisation at Grove have now been agreed by Governors for September 2008.

After several months of planning Jane Radbourne, Headteacher, presented the intended changes to Governors, who have given their full approval.

The first change will mean the reinstatement of the teaching period on Friday afternoon that was lost because of finacial reasons a number of years ago.  This will mean that students will once again be taught until 3.00 pm on Fridays and the school week will be restored to 25 hours for students, which is  widely regarded as standard.  at present our student working week of 24 hours is amongst the shortest in Shropshire and Ms Radbourne is very clear about the need to continue the drive to raise standards by increasing the teaching time available.

This proposal has the full support of Shropshire Local Authority. Parents and other stakeholders have been consulted and the responses were considered by Governors on May 19th.  90% of the written comments received and all the verbal replies were in favour of the proposals resulting in the Governors agreeing unanimously to go ahead with the change.

The second alteration concerns lesson length.  At present there are five one hour lessons each day, but to increase flexibility and allow essential curriculum content to be covered, there will be six lessons of 50 minutes each day from September.  Students will have some double lessons to allow longer blocks of time.

Finally, parts of the timetable and curriculum are being restructured to allow even more flexibility in Years 10 and 11, especially for students including vocational elements in their courses, and for grouping by ability in more subjects in Key Stage 3.