The flagship of Coopers Coborn’s success over the years has without doubt been its Sixth Form. However, despite a number of internal rearrangements, no major building programme has ever been planned for our post-16 students. Numerically Coopers Coborn has one of the largest Sixth Forms in the region, breaking 400 this year. Year on year the students produce magnificent academic results putting us in the top 10% of all schools in the country for each of the last five years. It was deemed an ‘outstanding’ sixth form by Ofsted in 2008.

Not surprisingly, therefore, over the last few years the School’s popularity at A Level has grown well ahead of the capacity of our facilities to meet potential demand. Current accommodation is makeshift and is becoming increasingly unfit-for-purpose. In 2009, 250 external students applied to join our Lower Sixth, alongside the 180 from our own Year 11. Many of the external applicants have excellent GCSE results and our own cohort produced grades that placed Coopers Coborn in the Top Ten comprehensive schools in country. We need to build a fitting space in which they can study effectively and comfortably.

We intend to stay ahead of competition and to continue to attract excellence – both in terms of students and staff. Standing still is not good enough and our 40 year old Sixth Form needs an upgrade. The calls of 21st century global society place an ever greater demand on young people. They need to develop the skills of independent learning that provide the bridge between school and university, and then the work of work. We have to extend significantly the private study areas available to our students, with the proposed construction of a customized 90 machine Learning Zone, a discrete Silent Study area in the mezzanine of a newly designed two-level library, as well as a wireless network within the Internet Café, located in the open-plan Common Room. There will be eight seminar rooms, three of which can be opened up into a lecture theatre space.

The Sixth Form Centre and Learning Zone will be the jewel in the Coopers Coborn crown and give physical representation to our aspiration to see future generations of students prepared in the long tradition of academic and professional success that has gone before them. The whole Building will be equipped with state-of-the-art technology. Registration of attendance, internal communication and local purchases will all be computerized. All teaching spaces will have digital projectors and interactive capacity.

To do this an appeal for £750,000 has been launched. The Chairman of the Appeal is Niall Kelly and Vice Chairman Jacey Graham, both are former students of the School and are liverymen of the Coopers’ Company.

Why are we launching an appeal for this essential resource? Why does the State not provide? These are not unreasonable questions. It has been made very clear to us that Government funding arrangements, both local and central, mean we will not be in receipt of new money for extending our facilities through the Building Schools for the Future programme for at least another 8-10 years, if not longer. If we do nothing but wait for state funding it would mean that over 2000 future post-16 students at Coopers Coborn would not benefit from new and necessary facilities. The School’s resources from its own budget and from the Coopers’ Company Educational Foundation have already been stretched to the wire to support our large and complex site. We cannot fund this new project ourselves.

This proposal, when built, will stand as a central resource for many years to come at the heart of our School. It will mark the next phase of necessary redevelopments that will see Coopers Coborn forging ahead into the new century as the leading provider of academic education in this area. We know there will be no help from state funding in the foreseeable future, so we must take responsibility upon ourselves to ensure the future prosperity of the School. Our determination to excel will not be limited by funding.

If any individual or company interested in supporting us in this venture or who have contacts with grant-making trusts or donating bodies I would be most grateful if they contact me at the School at their convenience. (01708-250500)

David Mansfield
Headteacher