The Friary School is a co-educational, community school, for pupils aged 11-18. There are nearly 1300 pupils on roll. It is the schools aim that all our students to be able to express themselves confidently and perform to the very highest levels. It is important that we help them to develop as independent, resourceful learners, with the initiative and organisational skills they will need in their further studies and working lives.

Above all, we want the Friary pupil to be one who is never afraid to ‘have a go’ at something, no matter how challenging it might at first appear. To help our students achieve the very best they can we set ambitious academic targets and carefully track the students’ progress towards them. Though we realise qualifications are vital, we believe there has to be more to a school. We also want our students to be compassionate and caring members of their community and we set great store by developing personal qualities in addition to subject knowledge. Social, moral, spiritual and cultural development is at the core of all we do. To this end we are delighted we have been awarded Beacon School status in Holocaust Education.

History is a popular subject at the Friary and has been the most popular option subject at GCSE and A Level for several years.

The History department is really excited to be meeting the challenge of developing innovative learning resources with the university staff to provide the best possible learning experience for the Friary students. Paul Calder, Head of History, and the school coordinator for the Beacon School programme has completed two study periods with the IOE, in London and Poland. He has also had a longer term relationship with the Institute in recent years after he completed the two day CPD in Holocaust Education and passed ‘The Holocaust in the Curriculum’ MA unit. Three other members of the department have now completed the first day of CPD as well. Whilst Alison Morris visited Germany on a teacher exchange for a week and Paul Calder visited Jerusalem for 10 days on a study programme based at Yad Vashem.

As a department we were delighted to host the first day of Beacon School network training supported by IOE staff in November 2013 and to be leading other local schools in the development of their teaching and learning of the Holocaust. A second day of CPD is planned in 2014 for our network of schools.