Curriculum
Whilst the school is proud of its record of academic achievement, it also places great emphasis on other important features of pupil development, including extra-curricular activities, theatrical and musical opportunities, recreational sports and community links.
The ex-headmaster Michael Griffiths (1997–2011) took a personal interest in the pupils' experiences of Art and Culture including leading the 2009 visit for 1,100 students to a performance of Madame Butterfly by the Welsh National Opera in the Wales Millennium Centre. The school has become well known for the quality of its theatrical productions, with the 2010 production of Les Miserables attracting many "rave reviews" from local media.
Cardiff High School's Mathematics department, led by Rhiannon Bill until 2011, has particularly flourished recently with Cardiff High School winning first place year upon year in the University of Glamorgan Mathematics Quiz and sending many Mathematics and Further Mathematics A-Level students to Oxford and Cambridge. All departments in Cardiff High School promote interdepartmental study; students from the mathematics department recently assisted staff at Cardiff Castle calculating optimum angles and range of the newly acquired trebuchet.
In a developing European scene, programmes for pupils' exchange visits with their German counterparts are well established. The school also has a rich international dimension, with students from many parts of the world currently studying at the school. The school believes strongly in the principle of continuous self-improvement, and to this end has introduced a considerable number of new initiatives in recent years, all designed to improve the quality of educational provision.
A key objective for the last four years has been the promotion of effective teaching and learning strategies, which has helped improve value added performance at each key stage. The various INSET programmes organised by the school enabled internationally renowned educationalists to deliver whole-school INSET on teaching and learning, linked closely to subsequent dialogue and discourse at departmental level. The senior management team plays a key quality assurance role by managing an annual departmental review and departmental self-review process. In addition, great emphasis is placed on the generation and analysis of quantitative data to both set challenging targets and critically analyse results retrospectively. Each senior manager is linked to a cluster of departments (which meets twice-termly) to enable two way consultation and communication to take place between all staff.
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“If we focus exclusively on teaching our children to read, write, spell, and count in their first years of life, we turn our homes into extensions of school and turn bringing up a child into an exercise in curriculum development. We should be parents first and teachers of academic skills second.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)