Turning the tables

Grange ranked 4th in the country for progress

HARD work by pupils and staff has rocketed an oldham school up the league tables. Grange school is now the fourth best in the country for the progress made by its pupils. We are celebrating the news, which comes as the goverment's GCSE and A-level tables are released today.

DfES league tables

It is ranked at number four in England for its value added score, which measures pupils ' progress between the ages of 14 and 16.
This means that pupils did much better than predicted in their GCSEs last year.
And there is more good news for the school: It is placed 42nd nationaly for its improvement since 2001 in the number of pupils gaining top GCSE grades. A seperate league table compiled by the Specialist Schools Trust - around 2,000 schools now specialise in a range of subjects - ranks grange as 24th best specialist school for the progress made by pupils between the ages of 11 and 16. In the same league table it is the countrys BEST Visual Arts College.

Specialist school status

Mr hollinshead said " We are delighted for the community we serve. It gives everybody a great sense of achievement that the children who come to grange are doing so well." He put the success down to a range of initatives. " We have focused on the individual pupils and we have broadened the curriculum to encourage them to do what they are good at. "We have also encouraged every pupil to take a mixture of academic and vocational courses so when they get to 16 they have a broad base, they can either follow the vocational route or an academic route. "We have not used GNVQs - vocational GCSEs - to improve exam performance, we have used these vocational courses to tailor the curriculum to an individual's needs."