Fortismere School
Fortismere School
Nearest underground station: East Finchley
is a high achieving and dynamic mixed comprehensive school, highly regarded and very well supported by the local Muswell Hill community that it serves. With a strong focus on academic excellence, as well as diverse cultural enrichment, the school recently featured as one of the Top 20 comprehensives in the country in a Times newspaper article. Heavily over-subscribed in all years and with a Sixth Form of 450 students, the school attracts applications from around 150 post-16 students from other schools each year.
Specialist status has enabled extensive investment in 21 st century hi-tech equipment and learning resources, with benefits across the whole curriculum. There is a dynamic approach to the whole business of learning, underpinned by constant self-review and a willingness to adapt to the changing needs of young people and the community.
A generous approach to staffing ensures that class sizes are kept smaller than average. This enables a high quality learning environment where individual student needs are met and where every child really does matter. A massive programme of enrichment activities enables students to develop their cultural and educational experience beyond the classroom.
Ample accommodation, spread over the large site in North and South Wings, as well as the Tetherdown 6 th Form centre, includes a brand new Science block, fully networked ICT, a brand new Sports Centre and all-weather Sports pitch. The site also houses the secondary department of Blanche Nevile School for the deaf.
As a beneficiary of the Haringey ‘Excellence in Cities', Fortismere gains additional resources to fund Learning Mentors, ‘Aim Higher' and Gifted and Talented pupil programmes. In the HMI Annual Report to Parliament for 2002 the school was named as ‘a particularly successful school', as well as receiving a prestigious DfES School Achievement Award.