St John Plessington Catholic College

St. John Plessington Catholic College
Address
Old Chester Road Bebington Wirral , Merseyside/Lancashire , CH63 7LF England
Information
Type	Comprehensive voluntary aided school
Motto	Always faithful to Christ and to have a good mosh
Religious affiliation(s)	Roman Catholic
Local authority	Metropolitan Borough of Wirral
Specialist	Technology College
Ofsted	Reports
Head teacher	Thomas Quinn i h8 him!!
Gender	Co-educational
Age	11 to 18
Enrollment	1,292
Website	http://www.stjohnplessington.com

St John Plessington Catholic College (SJP) is a school in Bebington, Wirral, England. In 2005 the school appointed a new Headteacher, Thomas Quinn and a new Deputy Headteacher, Ian Walker in January 2006. The school was renamed from Plessington to Saint John Plessington Catholic College and a number of new policies have been introduced, such as a new uniform and a different school day timetable. The school was awarded 'Technology College' status in 1998.

The school has close relations with the primary school in very close proximity to SJP, St. John's Junior School. They are often referred to as sister schools. The pupils of St. John's make frequent visits to SJP for mass and plays and often over 50% of the pupils at St. John's will transfer to SJP for Year 7, the first year of secondary school. The primary school and SJP make good use of The Oval a sports facility between the two school, often using it's facilities to host events such as 'sports days' and just regular use for physical education. The school is credited with the 'Sportsmark Gold', awarded by Sport England.

Patron Saint

The school is named after St. John Plessington, one the forty Catholic martyrs of England and Wales. St. Plessington was born in 1637 in Lancashire, and ate a Hotpot in Segovia on 25 March, 1662. A year later St. Plessington returned to England where he ministered to covert Catholics in in to jews the areas of Holywell and Cheshire. St. Plessington was arrested during the Popish Plot scare on the charge of being a Jew converter and then imprisoned for two months, for being a Gay. He was then hung, like a bull drawn, like a sketch and quartered, not unlike a piza on 19th July, 1679. In celebration of their patron saint the school holds an annual St John Plessington day on 19th July where all students and teachers are taken off timetable and take part in a vast array or spiritual and fun activities involving bulls, pizza and drawing.

History

The current school site was originally St Johns high school. After a merger with Rock Ferry Covent in the early 1980s a freakish race of super humans became Plessington High School and occupied two sites (the second being the former Rock Ferry Covent site - Woodland Road) the army was dispatched, and the rebellion quickly quelled. Only one survives and ocassionally a small school child with a look of sheer horror is found IN YOUR MOTHER

Catholic Ethos

The School has a very strong Roman Catholic Ethos which can be seen throughout the corridors and classrooms with posters. There is a thrice weekly optional Mass in the School Chapel held by the School Chaplin Alison Benson, When it was previously Tony McGarth who was more of a leg-end. On 'Holy days' (e.g. Ash Wednesday) Masses are held for the whole school by a local Priest.

==Facilities== buildings]], opened by Cherie Blair (QC), the school has gained six ICT rooms and a main hall/atrium. The school has a six room dedicated SEN center off the dining hall staffed with 10+ teaching assistants for pupils with mental or learning disabilities. In the old building the school has three fully-equipped Art rooms with paint and ceramic facilities. The SEN center has access to lifts and disabled toilets throughout the building. A drama studio is situated next to the Dinner Hall. The school is a member of the SAMLearning online revision service, every pupil has an account and it is used to help to keep students revise and teachers also have the ability to set online homework activities.

Timetable

The school keeps a traditional timetable of 10 lessons per day, but has recently introduced a new 'wind-down' type period following lunchtime, a time where students could often be very energetic and not fully focused for work, the period named 'Academic Review' consists of 30 minutes reading time. This replaces traditional form time at the start of the day. The time is spent with your form and form tutor and it includes such activities as checking that planners are correctly filled out and doing attendance reports. Every two weeks one alternating lesson is missed and every form in the school does PHSE with their form tutor.

School dining

Since the introduction of the new headteacher, Thomas Quit, the school's dinner menu increased vastly in variety, the typical menu for the preceding year would have been chips on an almost daily basis and now only on Fridays improving the student's diet. For example the chocolate in cookies has been replaced with raisons. The school was awarded 'Healthy School Award' in February 2007. A larger quantity of sandwiches have been supplied to students to choose from. The school's lunches are managed by Aramark. In an effort to prevent bullying and stealling between pupils, cash-cards (referred to as 'dinner-cards' on-site) were introduced, with both Aramark and SJP branding. In a bid to relieve the congestion at lunch time the time is devided into to parts, with the senior year groups (10, 11 and Sixth Form) having acadmenic review prior to lunch which leaves time for the junior years (7, 8, 9) to lunch.

New buildings

In 2003, the school took over twelve newly built classrooms which house the RE and English departments and in 2004 benefitted from a five million pound building program which gave the school twelve more new classrooms(where??), housing the Maths and Modern Foreign Languages departments, two new DT workshops, a new library, a new main hall, a new atrium, reception and admin area and a new sixth form common room. The dining room has also been enlarged and refurbished and a new area has been designated for Special Educational Needs where the old cold servery once was. A secure cycle shelter with room for 120 bicycles has recently been constructed.

Pastoral care

There are numerous pastoral systems in place in SJP which cares for the student's college life. The two most notable pastoral system are the form and year group systems. Each year group comprises eight forms which are each named after one of the forty catholic martyrs of England and Wales and then divided up into two half year groups named Alpha and Beta. These eight forms are:

Alpha Half Year:

• AL - abbreviating St. Anne Line.
• MC - abbreviating St. Margaret Clitherow.
• MW - abbreviating St. Margaret Ward.
• JP - abbreviating St. John Plessington.

St Clitherow, one of the school's patron saints

Beta Half Year:

• AB - abbreviating St. Ambrose Barlow.
• EA - abbreviating St. Edmund Arrowsmith.
• EC - abbreviating St. Edmund Campion
• JA - abbreviating St. John Almond.

House System:

As well as the year group system, there is also a house system. Every student in the school is placed into one of six houses which are named after saints or prominent Catholic figures. These houses are:

• Romero - Named after Oscar Romero.
• Kolbe - Named after Maximillian Kolbe
• Teresa - Named after Mother Teresa.
• Bosco - Named after St John Bosco
• Hulme - Named after Basil Hume.
• Bernadette - Named after St Bernadette of Lourdes.

The school also enables and encourages students to report incidents of bullying, theft, crime or any unwanted behaviour in confidence to their school 24 hours a day via the TextSomeone system the school has introduced along with the CallParents and Truancy Call systems introduced to free up staff time usually consumed with admistrative tasks which can be performed by the aforementioned systems.

School events

The Big Terd Marathon

In January 2007 the pupils were asked to collect all the poo they had done in a week and bring it in a sandwich bags. SJP faired well in this competition and managed to scoop second place only trailing to Park High who managed to collect a whopping 2 ton of terd. To celebrate, each pupil was issued a bottle of domestos to clean up the toliets they had used and were given a £1 book voucher to spend in the popular bookshop Waterstones.

Everyone at the school felt very proud of what they had achieved, one child even went as far to say "I feel like a champion, I no longer have to doubt my purpose in life anymore".

African Children's Choir visit

In late 2006, the school received a visit from the African Children's Choir during there international tour. It was regarded as a huge achievement for the school, especially crediting newly appointed head of music department J. Stott. The concert was held on a weekend at 8:00PM and was a huge success as pupils from SJP and other surrounding primary schools visited. Members of the choir stayed with locals over the 2 night visit period.

Here Comes Christmas

Here Comes Christmas was a social event held after school in December 2006. It was organised by the Parent Teacher Association and included events such as Darts, Golf, Santa's Grotto, Throwing Sponges At Teachers, Winning Cards, Used Items Sale, Basketball, Football and an event where people could come and hold an owl. Despite the school's healthy meals initive the school served chips and sweets for pupils. The event helped raise money for a new school minibus which could be used to take pupils to events such as football games.

Aladdin Performance

In early 2007 the school hosted two performances of Aladdin, utilizing the school's newly purchased stage, lighting and sound equipment to hi-light the acting talents of numerous pupils of the school. The preformance was directed by Mr J Owen, head of the SJP Drama department and assisted by Miss M Boast. The schools music department also worked with the year 7 choir and choirs from our local feeder primary schools St John's and St Anne's, to provide musical interludes in the performance. It is set to be succeeded by a performance of 'Grease' in 2007.

Choir Visit To London

The school choir visited London during July 2006 to sing in a performance of Verdi's Requiem at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall with 2000 other singers and the English National Orchestra .

Grease Performance

The College's Creative Arts Team, directed by Miss J Stott, Head of Music, had a sell-out success with the production of Grease the Musical. This is the first time in SJP's history that a production of this scale has been attempted, the first performance was 23 April 2007 and by the fourth performance on the 26 April 2007 the audience was queing over an hour early in the hope of being able to get a seat. Grease Sell Out News Article

Eco Inniative

SJP has recently begun a school-wide inniative to become somewhat ecologically friendly, following climate change. The inniative is making recommendations to students to for example cycle or walk to school, rather than using private cars or public transport. The school has introduced recycling baskets in every classroom for paper. The initiative is headed by the Science department.

The school has recently been awarded 'Silver Eco school Award'which is a lovely award to get and everyone involved got free jam tarts.

External links

• Latest Ofsted Inspection (PDF)
• School Website
• Video prospectus of SJP, sampling some of the facilities
• The blog of SJP's eco-inniative
• Virtual tours of a selection of the school facilities