Furze Platt Senior School

About the school

Working at Furze Platt Senior School 

Furze Platt is an extremely rewarding school in which to work. We are a highly aspirational and high achieving school seeking to offer outstanding educational opportunities. We encourage each and every member of our community to achieve excellence.

We have 170 caring, committed and good humoured teaching and support staff, together with a diverse student body of 1400 students, who come to school ready to learn and who are supportive of the school’s policies and procedures.  This is a school where staff and students work together to achieve high standards and excellent outcomes.

Our student body is taken from the town of Maidenhead, less than 30 miles west of London, and from other parts of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.  Whilst overall the area is affluent, ours is a truly comprehensive school, with students from all social, economic and ethnic backgrounds.  The school is popular, oversubscribed and well regarded in the local community. Parents and carers are supportive seeking to work with us to support their children.  The achievement of most students is good or better and has been significantly above national averages for a number of years.

We are also a very inclusive school, and our vertical tutor group system, with six tutor groups in each of eight houses, emphasises the sense of community.  We have a specialist unit for students with autistic spectrum disorder, and provide excellent support for those with academic or emotional difficulties.

Our curriculum is broad and balanced, and aims to meet the differing needs of students. Students follow the National Curriculum at Key Stage 3 including learning two modern foreign languages.  Towards the end of Key Stage 3 students are supported with the selection of their GCSE options and the school works hard to ensure every student is able to study the subjects they have chosen.

Our Key Stage 4 curriculum provides an appropriate mix of academic GCSE subjects including English Language and English Literature, Maths, and both Single Sciences and Combined Science as well as Ebac subjects. Some students can opt for more vocational subjects such as Creative iMedia, Business and Child Development.  Standards are very high; students make good progress and many departments have results significantly above the national average.

The Sixth Form is an undoubted strength of Furze Platt with 170 students joining year 12 this year. The broad curriculum offer and high standard of teaching has led to excellent examination results. A large number of sixth formers progress to university, including Russell Group universities and Oxbridge. Sixth Form students are also expected to undertake community work in or out of school, including paired reading and maths schemes, and acting as subject prefects or mentors. They make a significant contribution to the school.  The Sixth Form block has been upgraded and now boasts state of the art teaching rooms, study facilities and a common room.

We have excellent ICT facilities, with all departments having either a separate ICT suite or large numbers of laptops for student use.  Our VLE (‘FP Online’) is first class, and enables staff and students to collaborate simultaneously over the Google ‘cloud.’

We also believe passionately in music, drama, the arts and sport, and have some excellent facilities to support these including a Dance studio, two state of the art Drama studios, a professional recording studio, practice rooms and a recent addition of a gym and all-weather astro-turf.   As would be expected, there are a large number of music and drama productions, and students are able to get the most out of their sports lessons even in bad weather.

We have a strong team of teaching staff and are committed to developing our teaching still further, and thus to ensure that even more students reach their full potential.  To this end, we invest heavily in teachers’ professional development.  In addition to twilight staff development time and teaching and learning-focused INSET days, staff are encouraged to join working parties focusing on aspects of pedagogy and benefit from staff coaching.  Where appropriate, staff attend external courses, and we encourage staff to visit other schools to see examples of best practice.

Our most recent Ofsted report (September 2016) highlighted many strengths of our school and rated us ‘Good’ in all areas.

Furze Platt is an exciting school to work in, and this is an exciting time to join us on our journey as we near completion of a new three-storey teaching block and begin phase two of our expansion which, when completed, will provide us with a new hall with state-of-the-art theatre equipment.   I hope that the information in this pack inspires you to apply to work with us.  Should you require any further information, then please visit our website (www.furzeplatt.com) or contact me via my P.A. at jacky.phillips@furzeplatt.net.

With best wishes

Dr Andrew J Morrison (BA Hons, PGCE, MA, PhD)

Headteacher