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Career Opportunities > School BackgroundThe Thomas Adams School was established in 1976 on a 30 acre campus as a co-educational comprehensive school catering for all pupils in Wem and the surrounding communities. It was formed by the amalgamation of local schools dating back to 1650 when Sir Thomas Adams, Bt. Founded the Free School of Wem.
There are two main sites, on the same large campus which are approximately five minutes apart on foot.
The Lowe Hill buildings cater for the 11-16 age range. They provide excellent basic facilities for all curricular areas and are in a good structural condition.
At the Noble Street site of the campus, there is “Adams College” housed in the attractive old grammar school buildings but with first class new facilities provided within the last decade. Adams College is essentially a sixth form centre and provides an attractive environment for our c 300 year 12/13 students who have a high degree of independence whilst being part of a 11-19 school. There is excellent ICT provision on both sites.
At Noble Street there is also a specialist Music Centre, a Drama and Performance Centre as well as a thriving boarding house which has 60 boarders who at the present time come from Britain and twelve other countries.
We also have a joint use sports centre, and the extensive fields have extra sports facilities including tennis courts, artificial cricket wicket, basketball courts, hard surface play areas and many pitches for team games.
The whole campus is situated on the edge of Wem and is very attractive and pleasant for both staff and students.
Wem itself is a small market town, but c 60% of our students come to school on buses from the extensive rural area that surrounds Wem.
The intake is above national average in ability but we are still very proud to be a comprehensive school in ethos and belief; we are, for example, a centre for EBD students, having up to 10 such statemented students in the school at any one time in addition to our normal intake from our nine feeder schools.
We currently have c 1300 students on roll. The vast majority of them are pleasant, good natured and “biddable” - we have relatively few very difficult students. At the same time the student body does come from a somewhat insular environment and it is as necessary to strive to widen their horizons as it is to exploit their undoubted natural ability.
There are 90 teaching staff and I have nothing but admiration for their conscientiousness, professional skills and collegiate ethos and the support staff are of equal quality. The governors and senior management team aim to pay the highest attention to staff welfare as our way of showing appreciation for all that the staff do for the School.
We have a mixed ability Year 7, with setting in Mathematics and English, and then set in Year 8 and subsequently. Curricular organisation is based on departments. As from September 2002 we were designated an Arts College specialising in the Media Arts and this is bringing in considerable extra resources whilst adding greatly to the curriculum, teaching and learning styles, extra curricular activities and the community work of the School. We also have a new £250,000 Media Arts Centre with top of the range equipment and facilities. As a high performing school, we have recently acquired Vocational Second Specialism and this will help us to continue to broaden our curriculum with courses based on applied learning.
Pastorally the students are organised in year groups and the work of the pastoral team is regarded as a real strength of the School in the way in which it supports our strong emphasis in teaching and learning. Moreover, the wide range of extra-curricular activities on offer serves to enrich the lives of our students.
The reputation of the School with parents is exceptionally high and there is considerable pride in the School amongst the local community which we intend to keep justifying.
In our recent Ofsted inspection (March, 2007), the School was judged to be outstanding.
Neil Hemming November 2007 |
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