Alderwood Senior School is part of an "all-through" consortium of schools in Aldershot in Hampshire in the UK for students aged 4 to 16 formed of Alderwood Infant, Alderwood Junior schools and Alderwood Senior School. The roll for all three schools in the consortium is 1313 students as of January 2019. Alderwood Senior School is a mixed secondary school in Aldershot for 11 to 16-year-olds. In January 2020 an Ofsted inspection across all three sites rated the school as "Good".
History
Alderwood Senior School started life as Heron Wood County Secondary School for Boys in 1964, changing its name to The Connaught School in 1987 and making the decision to become a mixed gender institution with the closure of nearby Manor Park Girls' School. In 2017 the school was renamed Alderwood Senior School. The current Executive Headteacher is Clare de Sausmarez.
About
In June 2013 an Ofsted inspection was made of English and Literacy across the school, the outcome of which was ‘Good’ with outstanding features. Ofsted remarked on the “excellent provision” for pupils and also on “commitment across the curriculum” to raising standards. It was also noted in the report that “pupils across the school are making good progress.” A further Ofsted inspection of the school in 2015 rated it as "Requires Improvement". Recent years have seen a large increase in numbers of students with English as an additional language with 30% of students being EAL in 2019 compared to a national average of 16.9%. at the school In 2017, as a result of these Ofsted reports and considering that The Connaught School had "performed relatively weakly on attainment measures for the previous three years" Hampshire County Council decided to merge The Connaught School with the Federation of Newport Junior School and Belle Vue Infant School from September 2017, to create a single all-through school to collectively be called Alderwood School. A further Ofsted inspection across all three sites in January 2020 rated the school as "Good". Alderwood Senior School is a partner school of the Sixth Form College in nearby Farnborough. Since 2018 the school has been home to Aldershot Town F.C. Academy which has the use of classrooms in the school in addition to the 24-hour astroturf and gymnasium. In 2018 Young Sherlock Holmes author Andrew Lane gave a talk to students at the school while in 2019 the actor Gerald Charles Dickens, the great-great grandson of Charles Dickens, performed his one-man show of A Christmas Carol in the school hall. Recent visits in support of learning include: the Natural History Museum; the Imperial War Museum; the Old Operating Theatre Museum and St Thomas' Hospital; and Portsmouth Dockyard, the Mary Rose and HMS Victory while theatre trips include Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare's Globe, The Tempest and An Inspector Calls at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford. In addition, the Physical Education department organises an annual sporting tour of Europe during which students play matches against local teams while at the same time experiencing local culture and customs. Students at the secondary school are involved in an annual performance in the school hall. These include the musicals School of Rock, The Addams Family, and Grease''.
Houses
All pupils are affiliated to one of the four houses:
Given the town’s strong military connection, the houses have been named after former barracks in Aldershot which in turn were named after great military leaders and a Secretary of State for War.
In 2011 The Connaught School, in partnership with Aldershot Town FC won the National LiteracyActionNet Award for Double Club, an after school provision for pupils and parents that teaches skills in both Literacy and Sport.
