Shrewsbury High School (SHS) is celebrating after becoming the only Shropshire school to have been shortlisted in 2017’s TES Independent School Awards. The school was recognised in the Strategic Education Initiative category for its encouragement of girls to pursue careers and degrees in areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) and related disciplines and a corresponding increase in girls studying STEM subjects at SHS. The awards ceremony takes place in London in February.
Head Michael Getty puts their success down to a number of different strategies and initiatives, saying, “Major influences have been the huge uptake of open access STEM clubs in school and our award-winning biomedical programme for would-be doctors, dentists, vets, nurses, physiotherapists, and biomedical engineers that’s now an annual event.”
Other initiatives include engineering programmes such as one requiring students to build and engineer full-size electric cars in school and then to race them. The school also develops interests in areas such as computer coding and computer science at junior level, introducing Lego robotics and computer programming from the age of 9. SHS Prep School’s involvement in schemes such as Maths in Motion, where children are encouraged to apply mathematical concepts to virtual Formula One cars, has proved extremely successful with the school reaching the international finals for the last four years running.
