Thanks are also due to Mrs Sue Tickle, our examinations officer and her assistant Mrs Lynn Kearney, who organised all the exams which have lead to these certificates. It is always a great relief for exam officers (although it must be said, not quite as much a relief as for the candidates) to see the cycle complete and certificates presented. (Particularly if everyone ends up with the right pieces of paper!)

That ceremony is to come and I shall soon hand over to the Heads of House who will introduce their students.

We then have one or two special prizes to present and afterwards I shall ask Martin Salter to say a few words. Once the vote of thanks has been given and Tony Hampton has rounded off the formal ceremony, we invite you all to enjoy a buffet and reunion in the gym - and it looks superb. It may be crowded but no less convivial for that.

Each year we produce an annual report in time for this evening. It has been combined for the last ten years into the governors' report. Each family should have a copy. But if you haven't picked one up, please collect a copy as you leave the hall.

This year in a full 42 page report, we have included highlights of events, an account of developments, and a description of the busy work undertaken by the governing body and each of the faculties. The report also contains the University destinations of those Upper Sixth Formers who left us last year and the GCSE exam results of students who mostly stayed on in the sixth form. I hope families will enjoy keeping it as a record of an important year in a student's life. It also acts as an order of ceremony for tonight.

 

Another advantage of the report for me - and you - is that I don't need to run through a catalogue of all the many events that have distinguished the last year. Instead I have the luxury of being able to comment briefly and in more general terms about one or two features of the last twelve months.

GNVQ results were equally pleasing and as a consequence all students went on to good placements in further education or work.

At GCSE, students also achieved a record with the highest percentage of 5+ A*-C passes in the school's history. Our belief is that the figure should be 62%, but because of statistical readjustments by the DfEE, we have had to settle for the final figure of 59%. 63% of all passes were A* - C.

 

A further example of success are the 38 students who gained 5 or more of the top GCSE grades A or A* - that’s 18% of the year. In previous years I’ve used similar statistics to demonstrate to you how those results are better than any of the selective schools around … and this year I can’t resist doing it again! The selective schools draw from less than 8% of the population – and 18% of our students achieved the same top results or better while sitting more subjects drawn from a wider range of choices than most of the smaller selective schools or private schools can ever dream of providing. And you don’t see that published in the performance tables.

 

At both GCSE and A level, girls out-performed boys and this is in keeping with the situation nationally. The results were particularly significant at GCSE, where our girls achieved 66% 5+ A*-C passes, 14% above the national average. We should celebrate their success, but not lose site of the continuing drive to raise boys' attainment. This year the number of boys achieving 5+ A*-C passes rose by 7% as a direct result of initiatives targeted in the school development plan. We are now achieving boys results which are 10% above the national average. This is a considerable achievement and it will be a spur for us to continue the extra encouragement which we are giving to boys so that they finally catch up with the girls' results.

 

I spoke last year about my concern over our national habit of devaluing the other GCSE grades than those above C, turning GCSE into the pass/ fail exam that it was never intended to be. It seems to me to be getting worse. Some reports this year were even quoting school A-C passes at A' level, as if other grades don’t count. This just doesn’t happen to the same extent in other countries. For example in America the achievements of high school graduates are celebrated equally, whatever their level of exam pass. So I believe we can be justifiably proud of all those who achieved GCSE and A' level results at whatever grade because they represent their best achievements to date.

 

We should also be proud of our achievements in retaining one of the broadest ranges of subjects on offer, compared to any other school in the area, private or state. The extension to the school day on Tuesdays and Thursdays proved more popular with Year 10 students this year and we are steadily building up an expectation from parents and students that they will make use of this extra opportunity. The extended day allows students to follow more than one subject from an area of the curriculum, for example, two languages, two arts subjects or two humanities subjects to GCSE level. Similarly, more Sixth Formers joined adult classes and took advantage of the full range of additional GCSE and other qualifications available to complement their A' level or GNVQ courses. We began the first Advanced GNVQ courses with Business Studies and Art and Design available for first examination in 2001. Our policy of treating the education of students from 14-18 as a continuum has proved successful and our students have the opportunity to build up a portfolio of qualifications during Key Stage 4 and the Sixth Form. This will stand them in good stead when applying for Further or Higher education places. Once again, admissions to Higher education were well organised and successful. The outcome can be seen in the wide range of excellent University placements, which are listed at the back of the report.

But in the end, global statistics, as parents and teachers know, are nothing like as important as whether each student achieved their potential. Well this year, by and large, individual results at GCSE marginally exceeded the targets we had set. So they were as good as we had hoped for and we can all be encouraged by them - staff, proud parents and students together, but particularly, I feel, thanks to a very hard-working staff, who have shown that exam success can be achieved alongside the many other events which go into giving our students a very full experience in school.

Achieving high level academic results alongside all the many other opportunities offered in our school is a considerable achievement for a very talented staff, and sparing their blushes towards the end of a long and busy term, you may wish to show your appreciation.

 

THE YEAR

But how shall we remember the last school year outside the terrors of the examination room? Well it’s a time for looking forward because we’re all meant to be in the grips of Millennium fever.

 

Some of the papers have been running polls and creating reports of how we remember the last century. The Apollo moon landing is topping many of these lists. In the 60’s people were overawed by the technological achievement of getting a man to the moon and back. Yet the total computing power of the Apollo spacecraft is nowadays out-performed by even a Furby- a toy which has 4 times the computing capability (and that was last year’s Christmas present!). The pace of technological innovation is truly staggering and will undoubtedly accelerate into the next Millennium.

 

While the fussy amongst us argue about whether we should celebrate the Millennium in 2000 or 2001, we have been looking back on the last year to see how our school is prepared for the next century. Theale Green has never been a school that has rested on its laurels and we have always done our best in the past when responding to the changing needs of a changing society.

 

In all the discussion about the future which the forthcoming change of calendar date from 1999 to 2000 has brought, many people seem to agree that one of the biggest technological developments impacting on all our lives, now and into the future, is the global availability of information. With that realisation comes similar agreement about the importance of a style of education which encourages a love of learning. Without that, students will be ill-equipped to access newly available information and to use it wisely.

 

There are currently about 150 million computers connected to the Internet. Most of them are switched off most of the time. With the rapid changes to communications and the even more rapid growth of global communications companies, in a matter of a few years that figure will be in the billions and the computers will be switched on all the time.

 

165 of those I50 million Internet connected computers are at Theale Green- a result of a drive supported by sponsor day and the parent covenant scheme to fund a network of machines across the school. To make use of that connectivity, we already have one of the largest school websites in the country and a recent survey amongst our students shows us that 55% of families have Internet connection at home- a very high figure. That number will grow very fast when, next year, most televisions can be Internet linked.

 

We are a teacher training centre for IT in schools and the first training day for our own staff, on the first day back in the new millennium, is appropriately, another session about applications of the internet which support student learning. We are also looking forward to the advent of broad band connections that will speed up the system enormously.

 

It is indeed, a brave new world that students of today can look forward to in the new millennium. We must work hard, with family support, to keep up the momentum from last year so that our students are "future proof". They all need the necessary experience and training, which will allow them to benefit from the information superhighway and the developments that will surely follow in the new millennium. I am sure that the young people here tonight will continue to out-perform us parents in this respect and I know they need no persuading about the benefits to their future education which being IT literate will bring.