Specialisms
In 2004, the school was awarded specialist schools status in the field of Engineering and has since increased the provision of Engineering throughout the curriculum. GSHS is now one of the many schools in the United Kingdom with this status. The school also operates a Young Apprentice scheme, where Year 10 students have the opportunity to start a two-year course and earn an NVQ level 2 with the school.
In a partnership with the RAC, the school has recently built an RAC automotive engineering skills centre. This allows students studying engineering and automotive engineering, access to facilities that few other engineering colleges possess, whilst also providing facilities for other schools and businesses in the local community.
The school has a VEX robotics team called BHCVEX as part of the Engineering department. The team first initiated in 2010 when the team also won their first trophy in a regional competition using the standard VEX Protobot and Tumbler kit. In 2012 the team participated in the VEX robotics UK national competition and won the competition, qualifying them for the world finals in california, however due to inssuficient funds the team could not attend. Sack attack is the 2012-2013 season game, different to the 2011-2012 Gateway game. BHCVEX were finalists in the North West regional in the 2012-2013 season, which qualified them for the 2013 UK national competition where they are aiming to keep their status.
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