The Billericay School
Address
School Road Billericay , Essex , CM12 9LH England
Information
Type	comprehensive
Motto	Caring about success
Established	2005
Local authority	Essex
Specialist	Maths and Computing College
Ofsted	Reports
Headteacher	Mrs Susan Hammond
Gender	Mixed
Age	11 to 18
Enrollment	1656
Colour(s)	Black and gold
Website	http://www.billericay.essex.sch.uk/

The Billericay School is a mixed intake secondary school and sixth form college in Billericay. A comprehensive school for students aged between 11 and 18 years (school years 7 to 13), Billericay is currently led by headmistress Sue Hammond. As of September 2004, the number of students attending was 1673.^[1] The school has recent Artsmark and Sportsmark designations and has Investors in People Status.

The school is located in the town of Billericay in Essex, England. The school was opened on the 4th May 1938 by admiral Sir Vernon Haggard using a ceremonial silver key handed to him by the first head teacher Mr P.G. White. Mr White later gained the nickname 'Tiggy White' amongst pupils.^[2] As the population of Billericay grew, Great Burstead School now known as Quilters Primary School became too small to accommodate all students, for this reason The Billericay School was built.

The school originally only had one main building that today would be recognised as 'A Block'. Over time the school has been developed and new school buildings have been built upon existing school ground.

1938 - P.G. White

1949 - Ronald Eden

1955 - John Goldwin

1968 - Arthur Lingard

1991 - Robert Goodier

1997 - Sue Hammond

Locally it is well known as the secondary school that the comedian Lee Evans attended, as well as Charlie Wernham from Britains got Talent who got through to the show's semi-finals. The sixth form was visited in May 2006 by the former MP Tony Benn who delivered a speech on politics to sixth form students. Other talkers who have visited the school include survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp and anti-fascist campaigner, Leon Greenman. Annually John Baron MP, a Conservative Party politician and MP for Billericay, comes to debate with students on political issues of a local, national and international nature.

Other alumni:

• Michael Todd - Former chief constable of Greater Manchester Police.^[3]

The School achieved Maths and Computing College status in 2003 allowing some use of selection based on aptitude in these subjects. It was thought that this status would generate an additional £1 million worth of funding, but a government policy on foundation schools had reduced this sum significantly.

It is currently in the process of trying to sell the land adjacent to the school in order to raise funds for improvements throughout the site. This land was used for rural sciences when this formed part of the curriculum. There has been opposition to this as the land forms part of the green belt. A decision has yet to be reached on the issue as residents near the school fear that it may encourage further development from government officials in order to meet housing quotas in the South East.

Between 2005 and 2006 the school made changes to its day structure. This involved cutting the lunchtime by 15 minutes reducing it to 45 minutes. In 2006 the school announced it was to split into houses groups. The houses were to be named after famous scientists. In addition to this the regular pattern of 'same year' registration groups were to be switched to a more influential system to stop bullying and encourage younger year groups to become more active within school life, by placing a selection of pupils from each year group into registration classes of around 30 individuals; e.g. six 'year 7' students, six 'year 8' students etc. The only exception is the Sixth form where students in year 12 and 13 are put together within an exclusive part of the school for studying.

The current day structure is as follows:

In January 2007 the school was at scene of a BBC London news report after a gas explosion scare in near-by South Green, Down southend road. The school was used to house those evacuated from the surrounding area. No explosion from the acetylene and oxygen cylinders occurred but one man suffered burns from the fire.The scare scene was 3 houses away from the South Green Memorial Hall, heading towards the Kings Head Pub. It was basically a junk yard where a man collected scraps, although he had his house very close to the road.^[4].

As of 2006 Billericay School has A,C,D,E,F and V blocks.

The book Images of England: The Billericay School by Sylvia Kent shows that a B block did at one time exist - it was situated where F block and the carpark are currently located.^[2]

'B' Block did in fact exist on the greenary, next to the car park, where the footpath now leads from the main gate to 'F' Block.

'B' block was a two storey wooden struture housing metal and woodworking classrooms on the ground floor and art, pottery, home economics and technical drawing classrooms, on the first floor. During the early 1980, the school Bank was also housed in the block along with classrooms used primary for Economics, Business Studies and typing. It was demolished on the last day of term 1989, it took around 2 hours to pull, what was a basic wooden structure to a pil eof bits. Or around the time it took the then Head of Technology to drive home get his camera and return

In 2004, this trend was reversed when a 'V' block was created. It is thought that this refers to the concept of the block being a 'village' community. The V block was built to house the English department, whilst we awaited the "new" build block. There was a small fire in one of the D block demountables, but the fire itself did not contribute to a the installation of V block. However 2 of the 5 buildings still remain which were not touched by the fire. V block houses the school's English department.

This block contains mostly Maths classes but some science, French , German, and humanities classes also exist within the building. This was the original building from when the school was first opened. It holds the language department, maths department and Mr Broomhead's science classroom who as been working at the school for about 35 years

The biggest block at the school. It contains mainly Science classrooms. The main wing of the block is a 3 stories high with roughly 1 and a half of these rooms as Science labs. This block also contains the RBLC (Resource Based Learning Centre) more commonly known as the Library. It also contains the Drama Studio and the newly built Student Services and the important sick bay. It also contains (on the top floor) R.E, Media and Biology science rooms.

Due to a fire only four D block rooms remain. One of these rooms is known as the "D-Munchable", it is used primarily as an area where food/drinks can be purchased during the Break and Lunch times. The interior was designed and painted by the School's own students.

E Block is a Rosla building (Raising of the school leaving age)built to house the additional students capacity needed when the school leaving age was raised to a compulsory 16. It is understood that it was sixth form area and common room. This block contains the Art classrooms and the Food Technology and Textiles rooms. Also the Child Development room.

F block opened for the first time in September 1988. The original F Block contained the, then CDT Department (downstairs) and the Business Studies Department (upstairs). There were 2 computer rooms, F9 and F5. The server was an RM 286 with 60Mb of hard disk and 1Mb of RAM. There were 3 staff offices downstairs. Later, there was a major rebuild to the front of F Block, enlarging it to take the ever expanding school administrations. The reason for this was the school had become Grant maintained. A system created by the then Tory party, to give more power and money directly to the schools. This then meant more admin in schools. At the same time the Head Teacher's office was moved from C block (now the Withdrawal unit) to a new room in the new F Block.

As ICT (IT then) expanded, the Business Studies rooms, F7 and F10 became computer rooms. Recently F12 has been converted to house a number of PCs as has F1 with the addition of 30PCs to augment the DT graphics lessons.

The old print room from A block, now a Humanities room, (previously heads of lower school office) also moved to a purpose designed room in the new F Block. With the progression in print technology, the old ink based off set printer, that took a whole day to set up, print and clean for a whole school run, was consigned to the recycle bin. New photocopiers and new small self contained off set printers took its place.

Sixth-form students (years 12 and 13) are located in an exclusive area of the school and have their own study areas and common room, although the unit does not have its own classrooms and so shares these with the rest of the school. However, many sixth form classes take place in converted rooms that are much smaller than ordinary classrooms (such as A9, A24 and C13) and therefore can be classified as 'for' the sixth form exclusively.^[5] The sixth form elects a sixth form committee which aims to raise money for the end of year prom held annually, and performs other duties within the 6th form.

A group of year 12 students are voted on to a Sixth-Form committee by their peers every year. The members of the committee arrange Sixth-Form events, decide amongst themselves how the Sixth-Form area is used and decide how the Sixth-Form fund is used and what the money is spent on. The committee is also responsible for arranging the Year 13 Prom.

The current committee beginning 2008 includes:

Chair - Lauren Brown
Vice Chair - Ross McKenna
Secretary - Antony Dean
Treasurer - Áine Mullan
Sports Coordinator - Clare Popperwell
Charity Officer - Elizabeth Jane "EJ" Knight
Facilities Director - Alice Johnston
Publicities Liason - Stevie Newman
General Members - Mitchell Denham, Emma Obank, Jonny Bullock and Ben Taylor has a big willy

Every year students who have left the school are invited back for an awards evening hosted by Lord Hanningield leader of Essex county Council.^[6]

The school used a house system for a brief period in the 1960s and through to at least the late 1980s. These house names were suggested for the new house system to be introduced in 2006 but were rejected in a school vote.

• Audley
• Fitzwalte
• de Vere
• Christopher Martin^[2]

The Christopher Martin name was chosen as he was a Pilgrim aboard the Mayflower

House names 1968 - 1971

Stockwell (Green). Named after Stockwell Hall in Little Burstead. Norsey. (Blue). Name after Norsey Woods Chantry. (Red). Named after the Chantry Cafe an old historic building in the High St. Blunts. (Yellow). Named after Blunts wall.

2007-08 Newton (house captains: Rosie Green & Mitchell Denham)

The school has had some sporting achievement - Kurt Robinson - played for the Ipswich Town Academy and then picked to represent the England Under 16s at football - and this is just one of many amazing sporting talents that have been educated and perfected and the sport's stars just keep on coming with the current year 7 (now going into year 8) have raised the bar and have done especially well at the Districts Athletics. Outside of Sport the school has taken part in World Challenge and are raising money to go out to Argentina to help those in the deprived areas. Also, others have raised funds for Cancer Research, Comic Relief, Red Nose Day and even a Charity netball match between Men vs Women in the lower 6th (year 12) to raise money for the World Challenge, Macmillan Cancer Support and Cancer Research.

There is also a magazine run and published in the school library under the title of Reviewz Books. This magazine reviews new and classic fiction and has had interviews with authors such as Stephen Fry, Sheila Norton, Iain Banks and Sharon Osbourne. The magazine is edited by Barnaby Walter (founder editor), Rebecca Bedding (deputy editor) and Frankie Burt (co-editor).

FOBS or Friends of Billericay School is a charity which raises money for the school. Most of their income comes from various evening events, usually with singers or comedians, and the '200 Club', a monthly prize draw. The latest funding drive was used to fund the school receiving 'maths and computing college' status, and the organisation has recently raised enough funds to purchase a new school minibus.^[7]

The schools council is called Backchat. Each year also have two representatives which form a group known as Student Voice. The names of these groups were decided in a school vote. These two groups debate with both students and the Head to work towards a better life within the school.

There is reasonably well documented rivalry known by students of both Mayflower High School and Billericay School. Mayflower High School is almost 2 miles away from its counterpart in the north of Billericay. Both schools continue to do considerably well in both academia and extra-curricular activities.

In 2005, 59% of students gained 5 A*-C grades at GCSE, higher than then national average. A-level students gained an average points score of 278.7.^[8][9] In 2006, the Billericay School Sixth Form ranked higher in terms of A-level performance than the private Brentwood School Sixth Form (see BBC league tables).

• Secondary schools in Essex

A book about the school has been published called Images of England: The Billericay School by Sylvia Kent, Tempus Publications ISBN 0-7524-3083-1. The book was presented to the President of Pakistan President Musharraf.^[10]

• Billericay School
• 2004 OFSTED report on the school (pdf)
• BBC league tables article
• The Billericay School Orchestra
• DFES statistics on The Billericay School
• Billercay School's classlink
• The Billericay sixth-form's prospectus