Success Built on Innovation

Profiles in Success: Wildern School

Wildern School in Hampshire is using a pioneering programme of Apple-led innovation to motivate students and drive dramatic improvements in its exam results. The school’s GCSE pass rate for five or more A* to C grades has risen from 38% to 86% in just a few years, putting it in the UK’s top 50 schools. Key to its achievement is a focus on multimedia project work, a bespoke virtual learning environment, and online mentoring.

“We believe that the innovations we’ve introduced have had a direct effect on our children’s attitudes to learning and to attainment”, says Ceri Oakley, Deputy Headteacher at Wildern School. “Apple technology is right at the centre of our ideas, and provides the ideal platform for working with other schools and the wider community”.

Wildern School is a comprehensive school with around 1,800 boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 16. Achieving consistent success in exam results is a tough task for such a big school. Back in 1997, seven per cent of Wildern’s leavers had no GCSE qualification to take into working life.

In the late 1990s, the school saw the potential for expanding its use of technology: to augment teachers’ creativity across the curriculum, improve students’ learning opportunities and deliver better student results. The influx of technology would also help to sustain its strong links with the surrounding community and provide a basis for greater collaboration with other schools.

“We believe that the innovations we’ve introduced have had a direct effect on our children’s attitudes to learning and to attainment. Apple technology is right at the centre of our ideas, and provides the ideal platform for working with other schools and the wider community.”

Ceri Oakley, Deputy Headteacher, Wildern School in Hampshire

The catalyst for change was the school’s new arts building, the D@rt Centre. As a designated Performing Arts College, Wildern was obliged to carefully research the best teaching tools available for its specialist needs. The Mac was duly selected, including a dedicated video editing suite running Final Cut Pro and a professional-quality recording studio.

The school then installed a complete Mac system in a new state-of-the-art 17-classroom building used for Science, English and ICT. The building is totally wireless, with AirPort Extreme Base Stations offering a fast and robust Wi-Fi environment. The entire infrastructure is controlled by four Apple Xserves and an Xserve RAID system, which also services the school’s remaining PCs.

The school’s technology strategy was designed to provide new ways for children to access learning — including learning outside school hours and at home. A virtual learning environment (VLE) was developed in house, with the aim of enabling children to access and share coursework within the school and with other schools, and search for additional teaching resources and ideas.

“The VLE is now fully embedded in teaching at Wildern”, says Ceri Oakley. “It’s used in every kind of lesson as a repository for resources. It has fundamentally changed the way we teach, particularly the traditional idea of setting homework. We don’t say ‘finish this at home overnight’ any more. Many of our projects can be pursued in the classroom with teachers’ guidance and continued at home over time, using coursework on the VLE. Students can even submit their work for marking online”.

Wildern School uses multimedia to enliven learning in classes across the entire curriculum. Videos are created and edited with Apple’s iMovie software, and Podcasts are increasingly seen by staff as a spur to learning — particularly for language classes.

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