Bellemoor School | Southampton

Bellemoor is an increasingly successful boys' comprehensive school situated in the pleasant suburb of Shirley, Southampton.  It is housed on a small but secure and attractive site near Southampton Common.  The school is fairly close to town and there is a good transportation system, both within the city and within the area.  The school welcomes boys from all areas of the city.

I have had the pleasure of being the Headteacher here since September 2004 and can testify to the school being a truly dynamic organisation.  As a consequence of the Local Authority’s review of secondary education and with the support of parents in the local area Bellemoor will be admitting girls as from September 2008. This is a very exciting time for us and we are actively planning our ‘new’ school, not least is the change of name to The Upper Shirley High School as from September 2008. The wider community and our cluster schools are involved in all of our preparations.

The pastoral organisation of the school is based on a House system of four houses: Aviators, Engineers, Mariners and Venturers.  Each is led by a teaching Head of House, whose focus is primarily on teaching and learning, supported by a student House Captain and Sports Captain, whose focus is on inter house competition. The student voice is extremely important in our school and students hold a number of key responsibilities from prefects to sports captains, from librarians to student mentors.  Student council elections are held every year and the council meets with me on a half termly basis. We have vertical tutor groups, including students from year 7 - 11, this enables the older students to support the younger ones in school and prevent bullying. 

Running alongside the House system we have a strong and successful Student Support Service which covers all areas of pastoral support including: attendance, special educational needs, emotional support and  support for students with English as an additional language. 

Students are essentially taught according to their age group in specific subject areas.  The curriculum is led by senior middle leaders responsible for learning centres. . Some subjects are taught in ability based groups whilst others are taught in mixed ability groups. However, we are increasing developing personalised learning for our students, with each following his own pathway. There are increasing numbers of students following accelerated curriculum routes through the school and widening enrichment programmes.

Although the school has specialist facilities to allow our students to study within dedicated subject areas we are continue to modernise.  We have a Business Centre with state of the art ICT facilities including a large lecture theatre and two brand new ICT suites. The Music/Drama block has been recently modernised and we have a suite of fully equipped Science Laboratories with an additional number of ICT rooms.  The Learning Resource Centre was recently extended and refurbished, is well used and valued by all students and has supported their developments in independent learning and research. 

We have an extremely strong PE department which consistently achieves considerable success, across city and county alike. Through bidding to Sport England and the lottery fund we are looking to substantially improve our facilities. A fully equipped fitness suite was added to the department in 2006 and is incredibly well used by staff as well as the boys. We have a school sports coordinator based at Bellemoor; he has ensured very close working with our cluster schools and helps steer our own students through their Junior Sports Leaders awards. Through this scheme we have hosted a wide range of activities including dance and basketball festivals.

Although the Dining Area is not particularly large the food it serves is both attractive and nutritious! The clear focus is on healthy and wholesome food and long before Jamie Oliver - Bellemoor was doing it! We serve a variety of hot and cold food, which is cooked and prepared on the premises.  Breakfast is available before school and a variety of snacks can be purchased during the mid morning break, unhealthy options have essentially been removed from the menu, including all those fizzy drinks.

We have close links to other local schools and co-operate with them on many joint productions and activities, the most recent was an innovative production of Bugsy Malone with one of the local junior schools. We have a very wide range of extra curricular activities and as well as sport have achieved highly in the area of music, with one of our students recently being accepted by the London Academy of Music. Extra curricular activities include a whole range of sporting activities, the breakfast club, the Latin club, drama and art, Young Engineers and the Enterprise club to name a few.

I know that this is a truly exciting time for Bellemoor. We all have a clear view of what we want our school to become and how we are going to get there. The staff are totally committed to the school and the boys.  

‘The drive to focus on students’ learning, and thereby raise standards of achievement, is at the heart of what the school is trying to do.’ (Ofsted 2006)

We are currently preparing a bid for specialist status in maths and computing both are areas that boys can and do excel in. We have plans to improve our site but more importantly improve the quality of education that they receive in order to ensure that our students are prepared for success in life, either academic or vocational, and that they have high aspirations for themselves and achieve their potential over the five years that they are with us. Our students enjoy coming to school and are well behaved and courteous both in and out of lessons. Relationships are friendly and students feel safe. Students take care to be considerate to others (Ofsted 2006)

Cassie Ellins
Headteacher

Last Modified: 20/04/2007