The School

Our Mission

Kenilworth School and Sports College aims to be an excellent school, recognised as a UK leader in the provision of education in the state sector. By working in partnership with its community, it aims to motivate all the young people it serves so they achieve their maximum potential and participate fully in the future.

Kenilworth School and Sports College is a very large 11-18 Community Comprehensive School which occupies two very pleasant sites in the historic town of Kenilworth. The 11-16 campus has Upper School and Lower School buildings with a Community Sports Centre, floodlit all weather pitch, sports fields, dance, drama and music studios and fully IT equipped library. The purpose built Castle Sixth Form Centre is situated about two miles away in its own grounds. The school has an overall budget in excess of £7m and employs 135 teachers with an additional 64 non-teaching staff.

In its overall evaluation of Kenilworth School and Sports College, Ofsted (March 2004) stated “This effective school provides good value for money. Its success is based on much very good teaching and the high motivation of the overwhelming majority of its pupils.” We agree with these comments, but are not complacent. We know well the strengths of the school, but we also are aware that improvement is required and are committed to continuing evaluation.

Our school has recently undergone a restructuring of the Leadership Team to further improve the leadership, management and effectiveness of the school. From September 2007, the Leadership Team has consisted of the Head Teacher, one Deputy Head Teacher, five Assistant Head Teachers (AHT Lower, AHT Upper, AHT Head of Castle, AHT Director of Specialism and AHT Director of Studies - the latter a safeguarded post), the Finance and Buildings Manager and the Human Resources Manager.

Recent appointments have increased the school’s capacity to make sustainable changes and there is an opportunity for the new head to form their own team with the current deputy leaving for promotion and other members due to retire shortly.

We have a strong subject leader team who need leadership to ensure consistent and thorough implementation of the school’s strategies. In a school as large as Kenilworth with its 3 sites, staff motivation and cohesion are, and will remain, key challenges for the head.

We place high importance on teaching and learning at Kenilworth School and Sports College and we try to ensure all development activities address this area of our work. High priorities at the moment are the development and consistent application of Assessment for Learning strategies and, as part of the Secondary National Strategy, ICT across the Curriculum. We are also developing our systems for tracking and intervening with underachieving students, which we see as key to raising the progress made by all students in the school. These form part of the Single Integrated Development Plan.

Other school priorities include raising achievement at Key Stage 4 and the development of ICT, both for learning and in terms of hardware. We are part of the Warwickshire we-learn project and have over fifty classrooms furnished with teacher toolkits comprising tablet PCs, whiteboards and projectors. We are implementing a formal and rigorous monitoring, evaluation and review programme across the school.

Our school has for many years been popular with parents and prospective pupils alike and as such we are often oversubscribed. We have appointed an Extended Schools co-ordinator who works with our primary feeder schools to extend the services offered in the local area and we have a number of initiatives underway to fulfil our Every Child Matters responsibilities. One aim is to expand our sixth form which is extremely successful & popular.

We enjoy positive relationships with the wider community, which we wish to build upon. We are also exploring the options of becoming a learning trust and a foundation school, having developed good links with the University of Warwick.