Lower and Upper School

At Kingsmead, we have developed a structure of support for our students. It is a framework which combines academic support and pastoral care to ensure that all students have their progress systematically monitored across all five years. This allows us to carry out detailed examination of individual progress and to plan effective teaching and intervention strategy to ensure all students make progress which is at least commensurate with their ability and potential.

Lower School comprises Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 students.

Year 7 is the time when students build upon learning from primary school and add it to the acquisition of skills, knowledge and understanding that become gradually more complex as they encounter them at Kingsmead. It is also a time of preparation for the choosing of option subjects at the end of Year 8. In Year 9 learning becomes increasingly subject specific as students move up the school. 

Personnel:
Assistant Headteacher (Lower School) – Mrs J Pike
Head of Year 7 – Mr J Norman
Head of Year 8 – Ms J Day
Head of Year 9 – Mrs S Williamson

Upper School combines Years 10 and 11.

The intrinsic learning will be increasingly sophisticated in Year 10 and demanding as students engage with higher level concepts which require deeper understanding through yet more varied and challenging teaching. In Year 11, this will be the students’ final year at Kingsmead and the focus has to be examination success. Learning will be geared towards exam preparation and monitoring will be finely tuned to give every student every chance to leave the school with the best set of exam results possible for them.

Personnel:
Assistant Headteacher (Upper School) - Mrs A Cox
Head of Year 10 – Mrs S Hake
Head of Year 11 – Mr J Fairclough

Vital to the success of this structure and therefore the students are the form tutors who work hard to know all of their tutees to determine the correct type and level of support over the full five years.