Bourne Community College - Specialist School

Park Road
Southbourne
Hampshire
PO10 8PJ
United Kingdom
Tel 01243 375691
Fax 01243 379286
Email Us

Bourne Community College is one of the Government's specialist Colleges. We have a combined specialism of English and Modern Foreign Languages. These subjects feature strongly in raising standards and improving the college's overall performance.

Did you know?

Bourne Community College's English Department has been ranked in the top 4% of English departments in the Country, for the last 3 years.*
Bourne Community College's languages department leads the country in assessor training for National Vocational Qualification in Languages.

* Source: DCSF statistics

What does Specialist School Status mean at the Bourne?
It means providing opportunities and experiences for all, not only in English and Modern Foreign Languages, but across the whole curriculum.

For students, all our students have the opportunity to learn at least two foreign languages at K.S.3 or K.S.4.
	• They start with French or Spanish in Year 7 and then can go onto choose either of these as a second language or Italian or German. In this way we are quite UNIQUE in the area !
	• The staffing in the department also ensures they may also have tasters of other Languages such as Arabic Russian, Catalan and Mandarin Chinese..
	• When the majority of the country’s secondary schools have reduced their Language Teaching at K.S.4 we have expanded ours over the last few years and our results have just increased year on year !

For our Partner Primary Schools. We work closely with our partner schools to support them with the new K.S.2 requirements for languages
	• offering them support in delivering the lessons and in upskilling their staff. Two of the team work on a weekly basis with our Partner primary schools, going out to the schools to support language teaching.
	• We also invite our partner schools to the Bourne to learn new Languages on Open Days and with the new B.I.C.C.. we will extend this facility to even more of our future students.

• Transition liaison is high on our agenda and as well as the M.F.L. departmental focus other departments link closely too and as a result we regularly video-conference with our partner schools on a fortnightly basis in languages and science. Our year 10 students run the video-conference with our M.F.L primary school link.

For the Community.
	• Family learning classes take place weekly after school and range from Beginners Italian or Spanish starting again in Spring 2008 to G.C.S.E classes in Spanish. These will now be extended to include other languages depending on the demand from our locality.
	• Business classes in Languages are also planned for 2009 in close association with our excellent Adult education Department.
	• Alternative Accreditation the Languages department also offers alternative to G.C.S.E ’s and as such we are all qualified as Assessors and we have are own in-House Verifier. As such we support other local Secondary school with the implementation of new courses at K.S. 4.

For Links around the World.
Applying for Specialist Status has focused us all on how we are already and increasingly becoming, a “Global Looking” College, making links with different partners around the world. As part of this process we are applying for the Full International School Award from the British Council in July, which is recognition of our outward looking College. We also benefit from Assistants from the E.U. through the Comenius programme and the British Council who bring a more international flavour to the whole of our school through their Languages Clubs and by working across the College in other departments .Some of our main links are listed here:
Spain We have an established link with a partner school in Avilia in Spain :
	• reciprocal visits take place yearly
	• Regular video-conferencing takes place in year 8 and 10 and e-mail partnerships are well established .
	• We now are planning a 3 year Comenius partnership to ensure even more of our Spanish students will have the opportunity to visit our partner school.

Russia/ France
We have link schools in Moscow and Bayeux with whom we regularly email and exchange letters.

China
Our partner school in Shanghai was established by our Head teachers visit there and we are e-mailing the school and expecting a visit from their staff in 2008. As a result we are also e-mailing a school in Hong Kong.
For Links with the wider Community
We have established links with

• Chichester College International Department and welcome their foreign students for European Day of Languages / Chinese New year or Country focussed days such as Japanese days. These are great for Intercultural Understanding – (see photos ) as our students really appreciate being taught by young students from around the world

	• Southampton University Languages Department and
	• Portsmouth University for Gifted and Talented Days and visits from native speakers

For International Visits As a Specialist School we pride ourselves on ensuring all our students have the opportunity go to the country of the language they are studying at least once whilst at the Bourne. Either on an exchange or a language focussed trip. Other regular trips are also established
	• E.g. the Christmas Market trip in year 7 to Belgium,
	• Year 9 trip to St.Malo

For Staff Development
	• Staff in all departments have opportunities to visit other parts of the world such as South Africa , Canada and Russia and they return inspired and enthused which enhances their teaching and the learning of all our students.