From the Head… The 2021-2022 academic year at Shebbear College has been an exciting one! Although the pandemic continued to affect our day-to-day life to an extent, with periods of remote or blended learning making an appearance, life certainly seems a lot more normal now than it did twelve months ago when I wrote last year’s introduction to the Shebbearian magazine! This academic year has been absolutely packed full of achievements, experiences, adventure and fun and I feel proud to be leaving the school in such a fantastic place. During my time as Head at Shebbear College we have faced many challenges together as a school community - not least the dreaded Covid, and let’s not forget about Storm Eunice - but I will truly miss this wonderful school and its incredibly warm and welcoming community. The pupils have made me smile and laugh every single day and the staff are a brilliant team to work alongside. I will certainly be keeping in touch and I am excited to see how the school continues to develop under the leadership of Mr Jenkins. We started the academic year with a bang when, at the end of September I received the phone call that we had all been expecting, from the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI), informing us that they were coming to inspect Shebbear College for both Regulatory Compliance and Educational Quality. We were well prepared for this, but that’s not to say it wasn’t an incredibly demanding four days. In true Shebbear spirit, our community really came together to show our fantastic school off with pride and we were
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THE SHEBBEARIAN 2022
all absolutely thrilled that we achieved the highest possible grading of ‘EXCELLENT’ in both key outcomes for Educational Quality: the pupils’ academic and other achievements and the pupils’ personal development. In addition, we met every single standard set in the Regulatory Compliance part of the inspection. This is a huge achievement and I know that Shebbear will continue to go from strength-to-strength in the future. It has certainly been a year for awards and this has been down to our terrific staff leading the way: we were finalists in the Independent Schools of the Year Award for Sporting Achievement when we made it to the final six schools in the country from over 700 nominations; we achieved the National Online Safety (NOS) Remote Education Accreditation and the Certified School Status; we were labelled as ‘sector leading’ when we passed with flying colours a rigorous 2 day safeguarding inspection from MIST; and most recently we achieved the Wellbeing Award for Schools for our excellent mental health and emotional wellbeing provision for both pupils and staff. We have celebrated many pupil achievements over the year, including a number of academic successes. Pupils across the school undertook the UK Mathematics Trust Senior, Intermediate and Junior Maths Challenges with some excellent results. Some of our Form 4 pupils also took part in the AMSP Maths Feast, competing against teams from schools from across Devon and Cornwall and finishing in 4th place. Meanwhile, our A-Level Scientists achieved highly in the British Physics Olympiad Challenge and the UK Chemistry Olympiad this year
