Fort Hill Community School is a secondary school

Secondary school

Secondary school is a term used to describe an educational institution where the final stage of schooling, known as secondary education and usually compulsory up to a specified age, takes place...

 located in Winklebury

Winklebury

Winklebury is a large suburb located two miles north-west of central Basingstoke in the UK. Up until the late 1960s Winklebury was a collection of small holdings but Basingstoke's growth as a London Overspill town saw the area developed for housing.-History:...

, Basingstoke

Basingstoke

Basingstoke is a town in northeast Hampshire, in south central England. It lies across a valley at the source of the River Loddon. It is southwest of London, northeast of Southampton, southwest of Reading and northeast of the county town, Winchester. In 2008 it had an estimated population of...

, Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

, UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

.

Location

The school was built within the ramparts of an iron age

Iron Age

The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...

 hill fort, Winklebury Ring. Around the school perimeter some of the old ditch site still remains. It is thought that the Celts once established a farming society around this fort.

KS4 Transition

When a student at Fort Hill moves to year 10, they have the opportunity to drop subjects they didn't like in key stage 3. They retain 3 subjects they did like and would like a GCSE in.
The compulsory subjects are: English, Maths, Science, ICT and P.E (Doesn't award a GCSE)
The optional subjects they can choose are:

• Drama
• Hospitality & Catering
• Product/Graphics Design
• French
• Spanish
• History
• Geography
• Business Studies
• Art
• Music
• GCSE P.E
• Media Studies
• Leisure & Tourism

Uniform

There are two sets of uniform for the Winter and Summer terms. The winter uniform is a shirt, tie, black trousers, embroidered sweatshirt and school blazer. In the summer, the students can wear an embroidered polo shirt and not have to wear the sweatshirt or blazer, however the trousers have to stay black and the shoes are the same.The girls can wear skirts any time of year but are most accepted in summer. Students who attend the school are allowed to take off their blazer or jumper during lesson but most of the time have to be given permission to do so.

New school day

As the new academic year 08/09 started, a new school routine was introduced where they finished at 3pm instead of the 3:30 pm finish to fit in with other schools as the new diploma course was made available in the September of 2008. Instead of 10 periods of lessons at half an hour each , there was 5 periods of 1 hour each in the new school routine, making the new school day 5 hours instead of the 6 hours before. The school gave the reason that the new routine made it "much easier to remember the time table" and intended the routine to "make students work harder in lesson as they have more time for learning and remembering what they have learnt".

Feeder schools

When a child moves to Year 7, they are often coming from one of the three feeder schools in Winklebury & Buckskin.

• Winklebury Junior School
• Castle Hill Junior School
• Chiltern Primary School

When in year 5, students are invited to Induction Evenings & Year 5 Technology Days. Once accepted into Fort Hill, they are invited to Induction Day, and spend a whole day learning what Secondary School is like.

Frog VLE (Virtual Learning Environment)

The school uses a web-based program called Frog, which is a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE

Virtual learning environment

Defined largely by usage, the term virtual learning environment has most, if not all, of the following salient properties:* It is Web-based* It uses Web 2.0 tools for rich 2-way interaction* It includes a content management system...

) , the VLE is available for all students and staff to access over the internet to check work, check dates for the academic year and also access the school portal from home to carry out specific learning opportunity tasks and home learning projects.

External links

• http://www.forthill.hants.sch.uk
• http://www.chjs.net
• http://www.winklebury-jun.hants.sch.uk
• http://www.chiltern-pri.hants.sch.uk/