Silverdale School


Silverdale School is a coeducational secondary school and sixth form with academy status, in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. It is the founding school of Chorus Education Trust. It opened in 1957 as a Secondary Modern school, and became a comprehensive school in 1969. It serves approximately 1,200 pupils from the local area, from ages 11 to 18. In 2004 Silverdale was placed 4th in Sheffield school performance exam league tables. In 2017 Silverdale students achieved the top A-level results of all state schools in the city. Recent Ofsted reports have been outstanding, as of 2015. In 2018 it was named the Sunday Times North State Secondary School of the Year. The school converted to academy status in January 2013. Michael Vaughan, the former England cricket captain, is a prominent Silverdale ex-pupil.

New building

As part of the nationwide BSF programme, Silverdale School has a new building. Construction began 6 months late on 26 March 2007 on the site of the old playing fields and opened on 7 January 2009. The scheme is a controversial Private Finance Initiative, meaning ownership of the site has since transferred to Taylor Woodrow, who were named the preferred construction company in 2006. Besides constructing the new building and demolishing the old, Taylor Woodrow Facilities Management will rent the school to Sheffield City Council and other companies who can use its facilities for the next 25 years. After 25 years, the site and building ownership returns to Sheffield City Council.
Demolition of the old building began in February 2009. A new field and all weather sports pitch was built on the land.

Exam pass rate

In 2018 students taking GCSEs achieved a Progress 8 score of +0.67 which represents outstanding progress for students in all abilities in a broad range of subjects. This was the highest score for all secondary schools in South Yorkshire. In 2019 students taking GCSEs achieved a Progress 8 score of +0.58 which again represented outstanding progress.
In 2019 Silverdale was ranked in the top ten state secondary schools in the region, according to the Sunday Times. The school had been rated The Top State Secondary School in the North by the Sunday Times in 2018.
For A-level results, Silverdale Sixth Form has regularly achieved the highest results of all state schools in Sheffield ; in 2018 it achieved the highest A-level progress score in the city.

Teaching School

Due to its Outstanding status, Silverdale was successful in establishing its own Teaching School, the Sheffield Teaching School Alliance, which works with over 50 schools locally to train new and existing teachers.
In 2017, due to its success in recruiting trainee teachers and the school's history as a language specialist school, it was chosen by the Department for Education to establish the National Modern Languages SCITT, a teacher training programme solely for modern languages.
In 2019 Silverdale was one of six chosen by the Department for Education to establish a Teaching School Hub to bring together the work of local teaching schools, particularly in helping struggling schools.

Notable former pupils