The News Magazine of Comberton Village College
ISSUE 19, WINTER 2008
INSPIRING NEW LINKS COMBERTON is set to play a key role in the largest international partnership scheme in the English state school system.
meaningful exchange programme, with Year 11 leavers last year visiting Mozambique and running a sports festival along the lines of the Year 6 athletics event held annually at Comberton. Six Year 11 students have been selected to go to Mozambique in July and two students from Escola Secundaria Noroesta 1 are scheduled to visit Comberton next summer, funded by some of the proceeds from the Walk for Africa earlier this term. Now, in a project worth up to £100,000 over three years, the plan is to strengthen the link by involving Comberton's partners in the South Cambs Schools Sport Partnership (SCSSP). Turn to Page 2
And a spin-off from the burgeoning partnership with Mozambique means the African nation have verbally pledged to select Cambridge — and Comberton in particular — as their training camp for the 2012 Olympic Games. The International Inspiration project, which is being led by UK Sport with backing from the British Council and Unicef (The United Nations Children's Fund), aims to affect 12 million children in 20 countries worldwide ahead of the 2012 Games. It has been influenced by the Dreams and Teams initiative, which was set up two years ago by the Youth Sports Trust and British Council to link UK schools with schools across the world. Cambs schools were linked with Mozambique and Comberton has since set up a successful pairing with Escola Secundaria Noroesta 1 in the capital, Maputo. FACT-FINDING MISSION: Members of the Mozambique delegation with Comberton have Comberton Executive Principal Stephen Munday (back, second from right) and established a Director of Sport Nigel Carrick (back, far left).
‘Outstanding’ Comberton wins praise COMBERTON is one of only two 1116 schools to be named among the country's top schools for a fourth time. Of the 2,944 schools, childcare providers, colleges and children’s homes rated outstanding in the Annual Report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Education, Children's Services and Skills for 2007/08, only 22 have been listed four times and just CVC and a school in Solihull serve the 11-16 age group. In Cambridgeshire, 13 schools and 14 childcare providers were judged to be providing outstanding care, education or skills. Comberton Executive Principal Stephen Munday said: “We are delighted to be listed for a fourth time in the Chief Inspector’s annual report as an outstanding and particularly successful educational provider. “There are very few schools in the whole of the country that have achieved this. It means that every time that Comberton Village College has been inspected by the Ofsted regime, it has been given the accolade of ‘particularly successful’. “This long-term consistency of outstanding provision being recognised is great testimony to the staff who have worked here over the years, the efforts of very many students and the great support of all parents. Our target, of course, is, as always, to work out ways that we can continue to improve!”