We have a thriving and dynamic Department here, who are wholly committed to nurturing our young people’s imagination and creativity, in conjunction with our fellow Creative Arts in Art, Dance and Music. We teach with a philosophy that releases children from the ‘hum-drum’ mundanity of an “Eastenders”, ‘issue-based’ approach to drama and theatre, and gets them excited about the thrill and possibilities of live performance and what can be achieved in the direct encounter between actor and spectator. This is true of all our lessons throughout Years 7, 8 and 9, where we see every class for one hour of Drama every week (from September 2008), and through to GCSE Drama (which is a very popular choice amongst pupils) and A level Drama and Theatre Studies in the sixth form.

Our examination results have been consistently outstanding, with 81% of our students achieving either A or A* at GCSE Drama over the last four years. Drama students also achieve an average of 1½ grades higher than their expected minimum grades at both GCSE and A level, putting the Department in the top 10% for ‘value-added scores’ in schools across the country for the sixth form. This is partly based on healthy competition between year groups (with one wanting to do increasingly better and achieve even higher than previous years) and partly on being inspired by seeing older years’ examination performances in action. Drama students at Coopers WANT to commit to extra rehearsals and to working hard for success in the subject, and this is part of the training and discipline that underpins all our work with students.

Running parallel to, and impacting on the curricular success of the Department, are the vast array of enrichment and ‘out of hours learning’ opportunities that all our Drama teachers spend time and energy leading. Recent whole school productions at Coopers have included “Ghetto”, “Oliver!”, “Agamemnon”, “West Side Story”, “The Diary of Anne Frank”, “Guys and Dolls”, “The Singing Detective”, “Cabaret”, a full scale promenade production of “Macbeth” (which utilised ten different non-theatre spaces around school), “Sweeney Todd”, “Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and “The Boyfriend”. Quite an eclectic mix, but testament to the expertise and talent of our students, and to our desire to expose them to as many different styles of theatre as possible.

Take this with the weekly Year 7 and 8 drama clubs at lunchtimes, the annual Year 9 production in June, the Year 12 original pantomimes that tour to primary schools at Christmas and our ongoing collaboration with local theatre companies such as para-active based in Stratford, and you can see what an action-packed and busy Department we are! We have also had two Year 9 pupils, Mark Starling and Danielle Kerley, recently accepted by the National Youth Theatre, so congratulations to them, as they join ten other Coopers alumni who have worked with NYT over the last nine years.