Willows High School () is a

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

located in the Tremorfa area of

Cardiff, Wales Cardiff (; ) is the capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of Wales. Cardiff had a population of in and forms a Principal areas of Wales, principal area officially known as the City and County of Ca ...

. It caters for pupils aged 11 to 16 and is English-medium. As of September 2015, the headteacher is Chris Norman. He succeeded Joy Ballard, under whom the proportion of pupils attaining five A*-C grades rose from 14% to 50%. In recent years, Willows has been oversubscribed for pupils.

History

The school site is extensive and dates from the late 1960s, and was built on the site of the World War II airfield

RAF Pengam Moors Royal Air Force Pengam Moors, or more simply RAF Pengam Moors, (or also known as RAF Cardiff), is a former Royal Air Force station and maintenance unit (MU), located on the Pengam Moors area of Tremorfa, situated south east of Cardiff city ce ...

. The school is named after the air balloon pioneer

Ernest Willows Ernest Thompson Willows (1886–1926) was a pioneer Wales, Welsh aviator and airship builder. He became the first person in the United Kingdom to hold a pilot's certificate for an airship when the Royal Aero Club awarded him ''Airship Pilots C ...

who had his airfield on the site. Many of the buildings have since been modernised. There are plans to continue this modernisation in the future, including with a PFI agreement as part of plans by

Cardiff Council Cardiff Council, formally the County Council of the City and County of Cardiff () is the governing body for Cardiff, one of the Administrative divisions of Wales, principal areas of Wales. The principal area and its council were established ...

. A completely new building is planned, which could be located in nearby Tremorfa Park. The site proposed originally included St. Alban's Primary School, which was slated to close. However, in 2019 the closure was successfully petitioned, and stopped in 2020. The school featured in the 2015 Channel 4 documentary series '' Educating Cardiff''. This detailed every aspect of school life, and also highlighted many of the improvements the school has made in recent years. Starting in 2015, Willows participated in the South Wales Challenge (SWC) Initiative, sharing best-practice in education with Tonyrefail School,

Rhondda Cynon Taf Rhondda Cynon Taf (; RCT; also spelt as Rhondda Cynon Taff) is a Principal areas of Wales, county borough in the South East Wales, south-east of Wales. It consists of five valleys: the Rhondda Fawr, Rhondda Fach, Cynon, Taff () and Ely valleys, ...

. This aimed to help the school to improve academic standards further.

Estyn Inspections

In 2012,

Estyn Estyn is the education and training inspectorate for Wales. Its name comes from the Welsh language verb meaning 'to reach (out), stretch or extend'. Its function is to provide an independent inspection and advice service on quality and stand ...

rated the school as "unsatisfactory", reporting that it needed "significant improvement". The inspectors reported that, although pupils often had unsatisfactory English grammar and literacy skills, leadership was "adequate" and there were real prospects of improvement. The school substantially improved after this, and by 2014 no longer requires significant improvement. However, the more recent 2018 has found there are still many aspects of school life that could be improved, particularly in the methods of teaching and leadership. Despite this, the school had improved enough that in 2019 it was removed from monitoring by Estyn. There were 586 pupils at the school during the 2018

inspection, a significant drop since the 2012 inspection. The proportion of pupils receiving free school meals is 44%, which is much higher than the national average of 17.4%. Almost two-thirds of the pupils live in the 20% most deprived areas in Wales. Around 8% of pupils have English as an additional language. Twenty-nine per cent of the pupils come from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Former students

Notable former students include

Jessica Leigh Jones Jessica Leigh Jones (born 1994) is a Welsh engineer and astrophysicist from Cardiff. She is credited with becoming the first female to win the UK Young Engineer of the Year Award in 2012 for her work designing a portable uterine contraction m ...

History

Estyn Inspections

Former students

References

External links