The Astley Cooper School is an English 11–18 comprehensive school on the edge of

Hemel Hempstead Hemel Hempstead () is a town in the Dacorum district in Hertfordshire, England, northwest of London, which is part of the Greater London Urban Area. The population at the 2011 census was 97,500. Developed after the Second World War as a new ...

in Hertfordshire, England.

History

The school was established in 1984 following a merger of two local schools, Grove Hill School and Highfield School. It occupies the former Grove Hill site on St Agnells Lane. The former Highfield site, on Fletcher Way, was redeveloped for housing. The school primarily serves the

Grovehill Grovehill is an area of Hemel Hempstead; it comprises two distinct developments. 'Precinct A' laid out and developed by the New Town Commission in 1967–68 and from the beginning a mixture of private and rented housing specifically intended to ...

, Woodhall Farm and Highfield neighbourhoods of Hemel Hempstead. The school is named after Sir

Astley Cooper Sir Astley Paston Cooper, 1st Baronet (23 August 176812 February 1841) was a British surgeon and anatomist, who made contributions to otology, vascular surgery, the anatomy and pathology of the mammary glands and testicles, and the patholog ...

, an English surgeon and

anatomist Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having it ...

. The school celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2007. The school works in consortium with two neighbouring schools,

Adeyfield Adeyfield was the first planned neighbourhood to be built in the postwar new town expansion of Hemel Hempstead, in the English county of Hertfordshire. The keys to the first houses to be occupied, in Homefield Road, were handed over to their t ...

and Longdean, as the East Dacorum Partnership, for post-16 provision. The current headteacher is Edward Gaynor with Brett Daddow as Senior Assistant Headteacher.

Site and facilities

The school occupies a site in the Grovehill area of Hemel Hempstead. The school comprises teaching rooms, including laboratories, ICT suites, workshops, a food technology kitchen and a library. Most teaching rooms are equipped with an

interactive whiteboard An interactive whiteboard (IWB), also known as interactive board or smart board, is a large interactive display board in the form factor of a whiteboard. It can either be a standalone touchscreen computer used independently to perform task ...

. The award of

Arts College An Arts College, in the United Kingdom, is a type of specialist school that specialises in the subject fields of the performing, visual, digital and/or media arts. They were announced in 1996 and introduced alongside Sports Colleges to England i ...

status and its associated funding allowed the school to improve facilities for student learning. These included an

iMac iMac is a family of all-in-one Mac desktop computers designed and built by Apple Inc. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its debut in August 1998, and has evolved through seven distinct forms. In it ...

suite and newly equipped art studios, a dance studio and a drama studio. The sound capabilities of the main auditorium were improved allowing it to be used for concerts and shows. The school also contains a digital recording studio, photography suite,

zen garden The or Japanese rock garden, often called a zen garden, is a distinctive style of Japanese garden. It creates a miniature stylized landscape through carefully composed arrangements of rocks, water features, moss, pruned trees and bushes, and u ...

, organic vegetable allotment and a post-16 independent learning area. Sports teaching facilities include playing fields, a gymnasium, basketball courts, a fitness suite and a swimming pool. The school participates in the Dacorum Sports Partnership, an umbrella organisation for sports organisations in

Dacorum The Borough of Dacorum is a local government district in Hertfordshire, England that includes the towns of Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted, Tring and Kings Langley. The district, which was formed in 1974, had a population of 137,799 in 2001. I ...

. The facilities have been used by local sports clubs including Hemel Hempstead Swimming Club.

Curriculum

The school is an 11–18 comprehensive secondary school which follows the

National Curriculum A national curriculum is a common programme of study in schools that is designed to ensure nationwide uniformity of content and standards in education. It is usually legislated by the national government, possibly in consultation with state or other ...

programme of study for core and foundation subjects. Pupils are taught towards GCSE,

GNVQ A General National Vocational Qualification, or GNVQ, was a certificate of vocational education in the United Kingdom. The last GNVQs were awarded in 2007. The qualifications related to occupational areas in general, rather than any specific ...

and BTEC qualifications. The school consortium provides access to post-16 learning such as AS Level and

A Level The A-Level (Advanced Level) is a subject-based qualification conferred as part of the General Certificate of Education, as well as a school leaving qualification offered by the educational bodies in the United Kingdom and the educational au ...

courses, GNVQ courses and vocational courses. Astley Cooper provides a pastoral support system and a learning needs' team. Extracurricular activities include sport, art, music, drama, dance and creative writing clubs. The school has developed visiting artist-based art workshops centered on the theme of arts and ecology.

Awards

The school was awarded specialist school status for the

arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...

and has been awarded Artsmark Gold by Arts Council England. The school is a member of the

Specialist Schools and Academies Trust SSAT (The Schools Network) Limited (branded as SSAT, the Schools, Students and Teachers network) is a UK-based, independent educational membership organisation working with primary, secondary, special and free schools, academies and UTCs. It ...

. The school has also been awarded the

Sportsmark Sportsmark is Sport England's accreditation scheme for secondary schools. The scheme recognises a school's out of hours sports provision.

Sport England Sport England is a non-departmental public body under the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Its role is to build the foundations of a community sport system by working with national governing bodies of sport, and other funded par ...

for its delivery of the national PE, School Sports and Club Links Strategy. The school has implemented

the Football Association The Football Association (also known as The FA) is the governing body of association football in England and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. Formed in 1863, it is the oldest football association in the world a ...

's Charter Standard for Schools for football development. The school has been recognised by Investors in People. In 2013, headmaster Eddie Gaynor won the

Pearson Pearson may refer to: Organizations Education *Lester B. Pearson College, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada *Pearson College (UK), London, owned by Pearson PLC *Lester B. Pearson High School (disambiguation) Companies *Pearson PLC, a UK-based int ...

Teaching Awards award for best headmaster in the East of England.

Uniform

The school introduced a new school uniform in September 2008. It consists of a black

blazer A blazer is a type of jacket resembling a suit jacket, but cut more casually. A blazer is generally distinguished from a sport coat as a more formal garment and tailored from solid colour fabrics. Blazers often have naval-style metal buttons ...

with the school logo, a white shirt worn with a burgundy and light blue necktie, black trousers, and black shoes. Pupils in years 10 and 11 may continue to wear the previous uniform, which includes a burgundy school sweatshirt and white polo shirt. Optional uniform items include a burgundy rain coat, sports polo shirt, specific sports strips and tracksuits.

Initiatives

Visiting Authors Initiative

The school supports a Visiting Authors Initiative where authors are invited to speak at the school. These sessions are followed by a public book signing in partnership with

Waterstone's Waterstones, formerly Waterstone's, is a British book retailer that operates 311 shops, mainly in the United Kingdom and also other nearby countries. As of February 2014, it employs around 3,500 staff in the UK and Europe. An average-sized Wa ...

. The aims of the sessions are to encourage young people, both at the school and in the wider community, to read more and to become engaged in creative writing. Students and members of the public are given opportunities to question the authors and to receive critiques of their works. Authors who have taken part in the initiative include: *

Frederick Forsyth Frederick McCarthy Forsyth (born 25 August 1938) is an English novelist and journalist. He is best known for thrillers such as ''The Day of the Jackal'', ''The Odessa File'', '' The Fourth Protocol'', '' The Dogs of War'', ''The Devil's Alter ...

Jodi Picoult Jodi Lynn Picoult () is an American writer. Picoult has published 28 novels, accompanying short stories, and has also written several issues of Wonder Woman. Approximately 40 million copies of her books are in print worldwide, translated into 34 ...

Sophie Hannah Sophie Hannah (born 1971) is a British poet and novelist. From 1997 to 1999 she was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, and between 1999 and 2001 a junior research fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. She lives with h ...

Joanne Harris Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris (born 3 July 1964) is an English-French author, best known for her novel '' Chocolat'' (1999), which was adapted the following year for the film '' Chocolat''. Early life Harris was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, t ...

Mark Billingham Mark may refer to: Currency * Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina * East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic * Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927 * Fin ...

* Michael Dobbs *

Aidan Chambers Aidan Chambers (born 27 December 1934) is a British author of children's and young-adult novels. He won both the British Carnegie Medal and the American Printz Award for '' Postcards from No Man's Land'' (1999). For his "lasting contributio ...

Elizabeth Buchan Elizabeth Buchan, née Oakleigh-Walker (born 21 May 1948) is a British writer of non-fiction and fiction books since 1985. In 1994, her novel ''Consider the Lily'' won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association, ...

*Peter James * John Connolly

Wind turbines

The school was the first in Hertfordshire to install energy saving

wind turbine A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. Hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, now generate over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each yea ...

s. They will generate around 13,500 kWh of electricity every year and cut the buildings' carbon emissions by nearly six tonnes each year. Over the 25-year life of the turbines, they will displace 150 tonnes of carbon dioxide. The school has also invested in a web-based monitoring system that will show students how much energy the turbines are generating, along with data on the amount of carbon dioxide being offset."Renewable Energy Generation at Astley Cooper School"
Monitoring system. Retrieved 22 October 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Astley Cooper School 1967 establishments in England 1984 establishments in England Secondary schools in Hertfordshire Educational institutions established in 1967 Educational institutions established in 1984 Schools in Hemel Hempstead Community schools in Hertfordshire