School shortlisted for prestigious award
Shrewsbury High School is celebrating after becoming the only Shropshire school to have been shortlisted in this year’s TES Independent School Awards.
The school was recognised in the Strategic Education Initiative category for how well it encourages girls to pursue careers and degrees in areas of science, technology, mathematics, engineering and related STEM disciplines. Nationally trends in this area are poor, particularly in co-ed senior schools.
Since 2013 at Shrewsbury High, there has been a rapid increase in the number of girls pursuing courses in these STEM disciplines from 21 per cent in 2013 to 54 per cent in 2016.
Headmaster Michael Getty puts this down to a number of different strategies and initiatives employed by the school: "Major influences have been the huge uptake of open access STEM clubs in school and the award winning Bio-medical programme for would-be doctors, dentists, vets, nurses, physiotherapists, and bio-medical engineers that is now a large annual event and programme in school and across the county," he said.
"Similarly, the operation of engineering programmes, which require students, for example, to build and engineer full size electric cars in school and then to race them, are seen as forward looking and inspiring. Girls now pursuing these careers in such volume is important as it challenges the stereotype that only boys and men gravitate towards these kinds of professions.
"Leavers are now securing scholarships at university to pursue their study, with one Shrewsbury High Old Girl Emilie Weaving recently being acclaimed as GDST’s emerging talent for her work in high performance motor cycle track racing.
"Furthermore a key goal has been to start young.
"The school develops interests in areas such as computer coding and computer science at junior level, with the school’s work in Lego robotics and computer programming with children from the age of 9 also having been recognised nationally for how it encourages participation in such fields from a very young age.
"The Prep School’s involvement in maths schemes, such as Maths in Motion, where children are encouraged to apply mathematical concepts to virtual formula one cars has proved not only popular but extremely successful with the school reaching the International finals of this competition for the last 4 years running, finishing in the top ten out of over 100,000 global teams."
The Awards ceremony takes place in London in February 2018.
