Chelmsford County High School (Essex) URN: 136412
Updated 14 February 2020
Applies to England
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Fair access and partnership plan summary
The above school has made a commitment to deliver the following fair access and partnership plan by 2020 (and in subsequent years) as part of its successful Selective Schools Expansion Fund bid.
Admissions
The school intends to increase its Year 7 published admission number (PAN) by 30 places to 180 for September 2020. The number of places (for all students) in year 12 will increase by 30 from 150 to 180.
The school is aiming to increase the intake of girls eligible for the pupil premium to 30.
To that end, after the admission of looked after and previously looked after children into year 7, up to 30 girls eligible for the pupil premium will be admitted (around 16.6% of places).
The school will lower the threshold in the test at which pupil premium girls will be eligible for the above places.
They will have to achieve a score within the top or middle bands in the Chelmsford County High School (CCHS) Entrance Test. In the last 3 years 94.7% of places were allocated to applicants who achieved a score in the top third (band). The lowering of the threshold to include the middle third (band) greatly increases the likelihood of admission of girls in receipt of the pupil premium, this represents a substantial adjustment and therefore advantage to pupil premium (PP) girls.
Outreach
CCHS already works with an established partnership of 10 junior and primary schools within Chelmsford. These are the schools with the highest proportion of children on free school meals (FSM) or in receipt of pupil premium, they are:
- Parkwood Academy
- Larkrise Primary
- Lawford Mead Primary
- Trinity Road Primary
- Maltese Road Primary
- Kings Road Primary
- Westlands Primary
- The Bishops’ School
- Boreham Primary
- Moulsham Junior School
Additional schools will be targeted where a need is identified.
CCHS has identified further work targeting English and Maths in order to enable more disadvantaged girls to access the verbal and numerical sections of the CCHS Entrance Test. CCHS will run summer workshops aimed at year 4 and 5 disadvantaged girls as identified by the primary schools as pupil premium eligible girls. These will be run by CCHS staff and sixth formers.
CCHS staff will help primary schools set up “extension/challenge clubs” aimed at exciting the children with word and number games and puzzles in order to familiarise them with the kind of questions they will face in the entrance test. Sixth Formers will help deliver these as part of the CCHS community service programme.
Three hours free test familiarisation will be offered in the summer for Year 5 students preceding the CCHS Entrance Test in September of year 6. This will be provided for year 5 PP girls. It will be overseen by staff and delivered by sixth formers.
CCHS will produce a film aimed at primary school girls showing the reality of learning in a girls’ grammar school. This will demonstrate that CCHS is a diverse and welcoming community, full of joy, excitement, and committed to developing the confidence and future leadership skills of girls and young women from all backgrounds.
With the agreement of the primary partner headteachers, CCHS will set up a help desk in the primary schools to support parents with registering their daughters for the entrance test.
CCHS will continue to offer years 4 and 5 girls a programme of challenge and enrichment activities across the academic year. This involves working with up to 80 primary pupils on each of the five enrichment days, with its students and teachers delivering themed activities, engaging the primary staff who accompany the girls.
CCHS will continue to offer year 5 after school English and Maths extension activities, inviting the parents of PP girls to bring the girls in, thereby familiarising the parents and the girls with the school site.
CCHS will continue to break down barriers by inviting the parents and girls from disadvantaged backgrounds to come and visit the school, meet students and staff and go through the CEM familiarisation paper available on the school’s the website, which they may not all be able to access.
The Parents’ Association will continue to provide free or low cost nearly new uniform to PP students.
The cost of school trips, learning a musical instrument and sports or other required equipment will continue to be met by the School for PP students.
Partnership
CCHS will provide 6 (English, Mathematics, Science, Languages, Humanities and Creative) masterclass workshops, each with a specific subject area of focus concerned with supporting primary colleagues with meeting the learning needs of their most able both within and beyond the classroom.
Continuing professional development (CPD) is offered and will continue to be offered for primary colleagues: in acknowledgement of the challenges facing primary schools to ensure they stretch their more able pupils, CCHS has provided substantial materials across a wide range of curriculum areas to partner primary schools in order to share teaching & learning advice in relation to working with and challenging the most able.
CPD support is offered for primary teachers regarding their work in serving the needs of their most able pupils, using 3 hours of disaggregated INSET time as the structural means to facilitate this work. These will be offered in the Spring and/or Summer Terms.
CCHS also supports secondary schools: building on the experience of working with Bromfords School and Woodlands School, CCHS will invite other local secondary schools to hold focused visits to observe how CCHS teachers stretch able students and then CCHS will run a one day conference in the second half of the summer term to bring them together to review, evaluate and plan further collaborative work.
CPD will be run as twilight sessions in the summer term for local secondary schools focusing on achieving the top GCSE grades in the core subjects.
CCHS will continue to invite secondary school students and staff to attend CCHS academic lectures, leadership conferences and Oxbridge evenings and offer interview practice for the most competitive universities and courses.
Partner primary schools will be invited to use the CCHS sports hall (once completed) and the school’s swimming pool.