Teaching System
In the first three years of the school, pupils are almost exclusively taught in their houses, or 'tutor groups' (with the exceptions of Maths, in which pupils are streamed by ability in year 8-9, and by their second Foreign Language choice in year 8-9; until the 2008/9 academic year, where year 7s are now assigned two languages - French and either German or Spanish according to the house (Denson, Hampden and Lee do German; Paterson, Phillips and Ridley do Spanish) and then start learning Latin in year 8). Tutor groups are also split up into groups of 20 for Design Technology lessons, and for Art and Ceramics in Years 8-9 as well as Latin in year 9 where they are also streamed by ability.
In Year 10 and above, the year group is reshuffled into different classes for each subject depending on their GSCE options these different GCSE choices mean they may not see others from either tutor group or form. From this point onwards, the houses play no significant role other than teams for the Watson or Brodie trophies.
The teaching staff at Aylesbury Grammar School includes Dr. Carol Blyth, who has received a 'Teacher of the Decade' award as well as Dr Kevin Bond, author and Chairman of Examiners for Computing. Dr Bond retired from AGS in December 2009
Read more about this topic: Aylesbury Grammar School
Famous quotes containing the words teaching and/or system:
“The basis of world peace is the teaching which runs through almost all the great religions of the world. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Christ, some of the other great Jewish teachers, Buddha, all preached it. Their followers forgot it. What is the trouble between capital and labor, what is the trouble in many of our communities, but rather a universal forgetting that this teaching is one of our first obligations.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation; certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it: he cannot grow or mature.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)