Poole Grammar School, Poole | The Good Schools Guide

Poole Grammar School
Gravel Hill
Poole
Dorset
BH17 9JU
Head: Mr Andy Baker
T 01202 692132
F 01202 606500
E [email protected]
W www.poolegrammar.com
A state school for boys aged from 11 to 18.
Boarding: No
Local authority: Poole
Pupils: 1,199; sixth formers: 359
Religion: Non-denominational
Open days: July and September
Review: View The Good Schools Guide Review
Ofsted:
- Latest Overall effectiveness Good ¹
- ¹ Full inspection 24th January 2018
Previous Ofsted grade: Requires improvement on 2nd December 2015
Ofsted report: View the Ofsted report

What The Good Schools Guide says..

Less of an academic sausage machine than you might expect. Surprisingly for a grammar, SEN is one of school’s specialisms - head sees it as truly cross-curricular and serving the needs of the most able, gifted and talented, as well as those with identified academic difficulties. Humanities and enterprise flourish, lessons evidently absorb attention and boys are enthusiastic about all aspects of school. Adding ‘cognition’ to the potentially ‘nerdy’ specialisms of maths and computing allows the staff to boost their…

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What the school says...

Poole Grammar School is a selective boys' grammar school serving the Borough of Poole and its environs. It is a specialist mathematics, computing and cognition school with an international reputation for developing boys' literacy skills.

Boys take a set of entrance tests consisting of English, maths, verbal & non verbal - reasoning. There are 168 places available and the admissions policy is available on the school web site. At sixth form level 30 places are available for those from outside the school and the minimum entrance requirement is 344 points based on the candidate's best 8 GCSEs with an A*, A or B in the subjects chosen or in a related discipline. The DfE GCSE points are used 58-A*,52-A, 46-B 40-C, 34-D,28-E. An increasing number of courses are taught jointly with Parkstone Grammar School (Girls). Progression onto the second year of the course (A2) is dependent on successful completion and passing of two or more AS levels excluding General Studies.

The school is part of the South West Academic Trust (SWAT) with Bournemouth School for Girls, Torquay Girls' Grammar School, Torquay Boys' Grammar School, South Wilts Girls' Grammar School, Colyton Grammar School, Churston Grammar School and Exeter University which is an exciting developmental group aiming to raise standards across the South West with a focus on teaching gifted and talented individuals who will enrich our society. ...Read more

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School associations

State grammar school

What The Good Schools Guide says

Headteacher

Since 2014, Andy Baker, previously deputy head. BA from Lancaster (politics and economic history), PGCE from Keele and MA from Middlesex (social and industrial history). Taught at schools in Essex before joining Poole as deputy head in 1993. Likes pottery, skiing, period property restoration, music (listener and performer). Married with two grown up children.

Academic matters

Specialises in maths, computing and cognition, so it’s no surprise that maths is top of the pops at A level, closely followed by the three separate sciences, which everyone does at IGCSE. All students take French, Spanish or German to GCSE, though no classics or eastern languages. Fantastic results in maths and chemistry but also, impressively, in English, RE, geography and history. In 2018, 56 per cent of GCSE grades A*/A or 7-9.

At A level...

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Overall school performance (for comparison or review only)

Independent schools frequently offer IGCSEs or other qualifications alongside or as an alternative to GCSE. The DfE does not record performance data for these exams so independent school GCSE data is frequently misleading; parents should check the results with the schools.

Results by exam and subject

Subject results

Entry/Exit

Special Education Needs

The school, though a selective Grammar school, is accutely aware that many very able pupils can hide conditions such as dyslexia through strategies that as time goes on become more difficult to sustain. Hence we are looking to take a more proactive role in early screening of pupils to then give appropriate support for their learning as early as possible. Dyslexia screening now being undertaken on entry and an 'in house' literacy advisor has been appointed to focus on needs in this area. The school has adopted a second specialism in SEN (Cognition and Learning) with a focus on supporting able boys with a wide spectrum of needs. Pupils who come to the school with a statement or who are on the feeder school special needs register are immediately put on our own register and the head of the induction year spends time with the feeder school ascertaining the needs that we will have to cater for when the pupil arrives. We have a Learning support coordinator in place on a 0.6 teaching timetable; a specialist teacher for SEN on the staff for two days per week and 6 LSAs available for indiviudal classroom support or outreach work depending on individual cases. 09-09

Condition	Provision for in school
ASD - Autistic Spectrum Disorder	Y
Aspergers	Y
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders	Y
CReSTeD registered for Dyslexia
Dyscalculia
Dysgraphia
Dyslexia
Dyspraxia
English as an additional language (EAL)
Genetic
Has an entry in the Autism Services Directory
Has SEN unit or class
HI - Hearing Impairment
Hospital School
Mental health
MLD - Moderate Learning Difficulty
MSI - Multi-Sensory Impairment
Natspec Specialist Colleges
OTH - Other Difficulty/Disability
Other SpLD - Specific Learning Difficulty
PD - Physical Disability
PMLD - Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulty
SEMH - Social, Emotional and Mental Health
SLCN - Speech, Language and Communication
SLD - Severe Learning Difficulty
Special facilities for Visually Impaired
SpLD - Specific Learning Difficulty
VI - Visual Impairment

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Interpreting catchment maps

The maps show in colour where the pupils at a school came from*. Red = most pupils to Blue = fewest.

Where the map is not coloured we have no record in the previous three years of any pupils being admitted from that location based on the options chosen.

For help and explanation of our catchment maps see: Catchment maps explained

Further reading

If there are more applicants to a school than it has places for, who gets in is determined by which applicants best fulfil the admissions criteria.

Admissions criteria are often complicated, and may change from year to year. The best source of information is usually the relevant local authority website, but once you have set your sights on a school it is a good idea to ask them how they see things panning out for the year that you are interested in.

Many schools admit children based on distance from the school or a fixed catchment area. For such schools, the cut-off distance will vary from year to year, especially if the school give priority to siblings, and the pattern will be of a central core with outliers (who will mostly be siblings). Schools that admit on the basis of academic or religious selection will have a much more scattered pattern.

*The coloured areas outlined in black are Census Output Areas. These are made up of a group of neighbouring postcodes, which accounts for their odd shapes. These provide an indication, but not a precise map, of the school’s catchment: always refer to local authority and school websites for precise information.

The 'hotter' the colour the more children have been admitted.

Children get into the school from here:

regularly
most years
quite often
infrequently
sometimes, but not in this year

Who came from where

School	Year	Places
Castle Court	2017 to 2018	13
Dumpton School	2018	1

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