St. Thomas More Catholic School, Palace fields, Buxton, Derbyshire, SK17 6AF

Welcome from the Headteacher

April 2009

Dear Parents and Friends

Welcome to St Thomas More Catholic School and our new St Thomas More Website.

St Thomas More is a wonderfully friendly, hardworking and successful school in the beautiful market town of Buxton. There are just under 400 pupils on roll in this oversubscribed 11 to 16 comprehensive school and we serve a wide catchment area with the majority of our students being drawn from our partner primary schools of St Anne's Catholic Primary School in Buxton and St Mary's Catholic Primary School in New Mills.

Our most recent GCSE results show just how successful we are with 86% of our most recent year 11's achieving 5 or more A* to C grades and 62% achieving 5 or more A* to C grades including Englsh and Mathematics.

We recently received three awards from the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust:

  • "The Specialist School or Academy with 5 or more A* - C results from 2005 - 2008 improved by 10 percentage points or more" (Jan 2009);
  • "The Specialist School or Academy with 60% or more 5+ A* - C results including English and Mathematics" (Feb 2009);
  • " The Specialist School or Academy which has achieved a value-added score of 10 points or more .." (March 2009).

As well as being the only school in Derbyshire to achieve all three awards, we were amongst only 89 schools in the whole country to achieve this status.

Our Ofsted inspection in December 2008 judged us as "Good with some outstanding features". " The personal development and well-being of students are outstanding"; "Students' behaviour is excellent and their attendance is outstanding; they feel safe and greatly enjoy going to school" (Ofsted Dec 2008)

We have just secured re-designation as a Science Specialist School and we are poised for even greater success.

I do hope you will enjoy looking through our website and getting a flavour of our excellent school.

 

Yours sincerely

B Hickey

Headteacher