Specialist Status

Since 1995, the school has been a DCSF Specialist Technology College. This brings with it significant additional funding to support the teaching of Mathematics, Science and Design and Technology and encourages innovative developmental work across these subject disciplines, both within the College and in its partner schools.

Specialist status also encourages collaboration with outside bodies; among other organisations, we have worked closely with the Babraham Institute, Addenbrooke’s Hospital and with The Gatsby and St. John's College Foundation. We also have an extensive programme of liaison with our partner primary schools.

In 2006 we were deemed to be a ‘high-performing secondary school’ by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and invited to apply to adopt a second specialism. Our bid to become a Language College was successful, resulting in our receiving further funding to support the expansion of the teaching of languages in our own and across our partner primary schools. Our Advanced Skills Teacher teaches weekly in each of our partner primary schools. In addition to boosting the teaching of Italian and Spanish as twilight classes, we have also recently introduced Mandarin Chinese in partnership with the University of Cambridge.

To assume that our specialist status means that we excel only in our specialist subjects would be wrong, however. Our performing arts provision is second to none, the College holds the Silver Arts Mark as recognition of this, with our pupils achieving the highest standards of performance in Music and Drama; the quality of our sports provision is recognised by the Sportsmark award; the excellence of the teaching within our History Department is acclaimed by the University of Cambridge; in short, we aim for excellence in everything we do.