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Grindon Hall Christian School
Nookside
Sunderland
SR4 8PG
Tel: 0191 534 4444
Fax: 0191 534 4111
Email: info@grindonhall.com
Introduction to Grindon Hall School
Before Grindon Hall can enter into this Funding Agreement, we are obliged to consult the stakeholders of the school as to whether there is any reason why the school should not enter into an Academy Trust Funding Agreement with the Secretary of State. This consultation process will last for four weeks, from 30th April 2012 to 28th May 2012.
As part of this consultation, we are making as much information about Grindon Hall available as possible. We have prepared a Consultation Information Pack, which provides information about Grindon Hall’s
A template of the Funding Agreement to be signed is also available for download, as are Grindon Hall’s key school policies – each of which is an appendix to the Funding Agreement and forms part of the legally binding contract with the Secretary of State for Education. This information can be accessed by following the links below. If for any reason you have trouble accessing this information, it is also available in hardcopy upon request by contacting the school on 0191 534 4444.
Special Education Needs Policy
Discipline and Behaviour Policy
[Please note: the Admissions Policy makes reference to the provision for children of staff in its oversubscription criteria. This is a deviation from the current Schools Admissions Code, but it is a provision which will come into effect from September 2013. We have been granted permission from the Department for Education to include this provision in this year’s Admissions Policy.]
Anybody who has an interest in the success of Grindon Hall, or anybody who will be affected by changes to the school, is a stakeholder. If you are a stakeholder of Grindon Hall, please could you complete the brief Consultation Form available for download by clicking here and return it to the school by the 28th May 2012, using the details provided. This can also be made available in hardcopy by contacting the school office on 0191 534 4444.
We are very excited about the opportunity to serve our local community by becoming a
Grindon Hall's Parent-Teacher-Pupil Association invites all staff and parents to its Annual May Ball on Friday 18th May. Please click here for further details.
The Gold Standard
The recent announcement that a large number of qualifications are to have their GCSE status downgraded is welcome. It is clearly the case that, understandably, many schools have opted for such courses (extreme examples of which include Nail Technology, Fish Husbandry and Horse Care) in order to boost their league table standing. In some (again extreme) cases, such courses have been worth six GCSEs! This is frankly ridiculous, as most people would surely agree. More importantly, it has been very unfair on students and parents as it has misled many to believe that such subjects are valued by universities, colleges and by employers. They simply are not.
That’s why we at Grindon Hall have always stuck to a traditional range of academic subjects – some would call them “proper” subjects. It’s also why the government have now introduced the “Gold Standard” – the English Baccalaureate – which measures a school and its students on how many achieve at least a C grade in English, Maths, two Sciences, Geography or History and a language. That is a meaningful and revealing measure, far more useful than the old measure of 5 Cs in any subjects, or even the more recent measure of 5 Cs including English and Maths. Many schools have performed reasonably well on those measures, but on the E.Bacc have done very badly indeed.
We are naturally delighted that our E.Bacc result of 48% puts us way out on top of this year’s Sunderland Schools League Tables – the next best was 33% and no other independent school achieved more than 26%. That is the Gold Standard, and we are happy to be measured against it.
Of course, we must acknowledge that 52% of last year’s GCSE cohort did not reach that standard, and that gives us room for improvement. As we move to free school status next year, our aim is to achieve the kind of levels – 70% and above – which will put us in the same category as the very best schools in the country, the vast majority of which are selective private schools. That is achievable and we are determined to get there.
Congratulations to our students and to their teachers on another successful year.
The remarkable achievements of our gymnasts continues and once again this month (May 2012) our team travels to Stoke to compete in the National Schools Finals. Photos will appear here following the event (May 12th). Please click on the link above for details of last year's event.
My comments on Latin (below) first appeared on Tuesday 1st March. Already some feedback has been generated, including the following from a Grindon Hall parent. Interestingly, I note that the word "cretaceous" is derived from the Latin word for "chalk". It is unclear whether the reference here is to the geologic period in history sometimes known as the chalk period (about 100 million years ago. I doubt it - the parent concerned does not look old enough) or to the era in schools, which some of us might remember, when teachers actually used chalk to write on blackboards. An interesting question and I will seek clarification. In the meantime, here are the very helpful comments:
"Of the subjects I studied at A Level (back in the Cretaceous period) I would say that Latin has been by far the most useful. It was invaluable in my career as a lawyer, it has been of considerable assistance in my command of English spelling and the derivation of words, and was most useful when my job involved considerable worldwide travel and I was trying to make sense of words in languages with which I was unfamiliar. I think it is a great shame that the teaching of Latin has declined to such a great extent within the state system, and feel that this is at least partly responsible for the general decline in the quality of written English used by many young people today, something I notice frequently when perusing application forms. So thank you for sticking to your guns!"
Why Study Latin?
Some people have asked me why on earth we include Latin in the curriculum here at Grindon Hall. After all, they might say, no-one speaks it, you can’t use it on holiday and it is to all intents and purposes “a dead language”. Sadly, in some ways it does indeed appear to be on its way out. A case, perhaps, of exeunt omnes. Only 15% of state schools now teach it (compared with almost 70% of independent schools), the supply of Classics teachers is little more than a dribble (a dribble of Classics teachers? – is that a suitable collective noun?) and the recently-departed Education Minister, the not-very-lamented Mr Balls, publicly ridiculed the subject before he was sent packing at the last election. This is all very sad, but there are glimmers of light.
If Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, can be described as being in any sense a “glimmer of light”, then he certainly is in this respect. He has campaigned fiercely for a number of years for a return to Classics teaching, and to Latin in particular. Mr Gove seems to be at least to some extent on his side. That is good news, and bodes well.
Dorothy L Sayers, the famous crime novelist (author of the Lord Peter Wimsey books) and incidentally a lady of firm Christian conviction, said this: “I will say at once, quite firmly, that the best grounding for education is the Latin grammar. I say this not because Latin is traditional and medieval, but simply because even a rudimentary knowledge of Latin cuts down the labour and pains of learning almost any other subject by at least 50 percent.”
Her point has nothing to do with whether people still speak Latin – that is irrelevant. Latin, she claims, makes everything else clearer and more straightforward. Learning Latin is really hard – that, I suspect, is at the root of its decline – but mastering its grammatical complexities trains the mind in such a way that other subjects can be tackled more readily.
Is there evidence for that? I think there is, and it is not all anecdotal.
In America, for example, students who havestudied Latin consistently perform far better than others in examinations and are highly sought after by competitive colleges. As a result of increased vocabulary and facility with English grammar, students of Latin consistently outperform their peers—including those who have studied modern languages. Between 1997 and 2006, Latin students outscored the average by 157 points.
Law Schools in both the USA and Britain report that their top students come from Maths, Classics and Literature backgrounds. Those who have studied subjects such as Politics, Law, Legal Studies or Economics rank much lower. Twenty years ago, the Times reported that “… shrewd employers, including many in the City, still prefer job-applicants whose minds were formed by Aeschylus or Horace". I doubt that that has changed; if anything, it may have become an even stronger factor. At a time when the competition for jobs and University places is so fierce, it will often be those who can demonstrate a knowledge of Latin who stand out from the crowd.
In the early 20th century, the great German Chemist, Bauer, was asked by one of his colleagues whether his best students came from the Real-Schulen (a modern school where Chemistry was taught as a subject) or from the Gymnasien (a traditional liberal arts school where Latin grammar was stressed). His colleague's assumption was that the best science students would come from the Real-Schulen. "Not at all," Bauer replied, "all my best students come from the Gymnasien. The students from the Real-Schulen do best at first; but after three months work here, they are, as a rule, left behind by those coming from the Gymnasien." The colleague wondered at this because the Real-Schulen students had been especially instructed in Chemistry. "Yes," he replied; "but the students from the Gymnasien have the best trained minds. Give me a student who has been taught his Latin grammar, and I will answer for his Chemistry."
The man or woman who has conquered Everest should have no difficulty in climbing Cheviot. That, I think, is the point.
It is very satisfying for me to see over 25 students attending after-school French Grammar Clubs every week. Perhaps I delude myself in thinking they arethere voluntarily, but at least they come. Studying grammar can be enjoyable – not least because mastering the grammar of a language opens up the language so much more easily than anything else.
Boris Johnson says this: “The reason we should boost the study of Latin and Greek is that they are the key to a phenomenal and unsurpassed treasury of literature and history and philosophy, and we cannot possibly understand our modern world unless we understand the ancient world that made us all.”
So, we will continue to teach Latin, as long as we can find the teachers to do it. If necessary, I will do it myself! By doing so, we are giving our children a great education and they will thank us for it in future years.
Mark Zuckerberg is the youthful founder of Facebook. Yes, I know we at Grindon Hall have reservations about Facebook, but I am trying to make a point, so bear with me. Zuckerberg is, on a purely financial basis, rather successful. It is said he is “worth” $10 billion. You know where I’m going with this. What did Zuckerberg study at University? Computer Science? No. He studied Classics at Phillips Exeter Academy. Latin, he says, is one of the keys to his success.
Per pietatem ad gaudium
(Thoughts from the Principal's office on a cold Thursday evening in November ...)
Mr Cameron, we hear, wants us all to be happy. Very nice of him. And of course he is quite right in claiming that GDP (gross domestic product) is a very poor index of general well-being and happiness. That has been used by governments for generations and is based on the wholly inadequate idea that material wealth makes everything okay. It most definitely doesn’t, and it is good that the prime minister is, even in these straitened times, prepared to voice his thoughts about how we might measure “happiness”. It was, I think, one of the Kennedys who said that GDP measures everything except the things that make life worthwhile. A perceptive comment, it seems to me.
As we reflect on the history of the last few hundred years – and perhaps especially the last hundred – we surely cannot escape the conclusion that wealth and money are not the answer to our search for happiness.
The great journalist Bernard Levin once said, “Countries like ours are full of people who have all the material comforts they desire, together with such blessings as a happy family, and yet lead lives of quiet, and at times noisy, desperation, understanding nothing but the fact that there is a hole inside them and that however much food and drink they pour into it, however many motor cars and television sets they stuff it with, however many well-balanced children and loyal friends they parade around the edges of it…it aches”
The American Declaration of Independence was no doubt an excellent thing, but it seems to me that at the heart of its most famous clause lies a deep and significant error: an error which has perhaps influenced our thinking in the West more than we might think. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” it says, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
The pursuit of happiness? History, life and experience teach us that happiness cannot be pursued. Pursuing our own happiness as an end in itself inevitably leads to dissatisfaction, as Levin suggests in the above quotation. At its worst it leads to a glut of over-indulgence and excess, and ends in pain and despair.
Happiness is not a goal. It is a by-product. The famous theologian Augustine of Hippo prayed to the God of the Bible in these terms: “Lord, you have made me for yourself, and my soul can find no rest until it finds its rest in you.”
Firstly, then, happiness is a by-product of a proper relationship with our creator.
Secondly, happiness is a by-product of doing the right thing. How many parents longingly tell me that all they want is for their child “to be happy”. I fear that in many cases what I see is the exact opposite. When we pursue happiness, the one thing we guarantee is that we won’t find it.
I wish more of us could say that what we really want for our children is for them “to be good”. Not good in the sense of being well-behaved in lessons! But rather, good in the sense of doing good, virtuous and wholesome things: being unselfish, generous and open-hearted.
That is the well-spring from which true happiness flows. Not as a goal to be pursued – that’s like chasing shadows – but as the by-product of knowing God as our maker and, with God’s strength, striving to “be good”.
That’s why Grindon Hall will soon adopt as its motto the following - per pietatem ad gaudium. This literally means “through duty to delight”. Doing our duty, doing the right thing, fulfilling our obligations. These are not particularly popular ideas today when self-indulgence, self-expression and self-fulfilment are the buzz words.
But if you really want to be happy, they must come first.
We would love to receive feedback on our website. Is it helpful? Interesting? Or neither? Let us know by emailing r.nurse@grindonhall.com.
Please do read the Parental Undertaking document - essential reading for all prospective parents - and I would also encourage you to view our 'uniform' page for Primary and Senior pupils.
We are always pleased to welcome visitors to our school and indeed it is the only way to get a real sense of the thriving, happy educational environment we provide. Please contact the school office if you would like to arrange an appointment to speak with me and look around the school.
Christopher J Gray, Principal
The remarkable achievements of our gymnasts continues and once again this month (May 2012) our team travels to Stoke to compete in the National Schools Finals. Photos will appear here following the event (May 12th). Please click on the link above for details of last year's event.
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