Teacher of Biology

Nicholas Chamberlaine School (NCS), named after a local benefactor prominent in the history of the area, opened in 1953 to serve the population of Bedworth. It has always been a comprehensive school in terms of intake, despite being a technology college for some time before joining the Griffin Schools Trust (GST) and reverting to its founding name. Its former students have included well-known sportsmen and women and at least one pop musician.

The school is very important to the town and is the obvious first choice of secondary school. It is also the second largest employer in Bedworth, after Tesco which has a grade A store there. The community uses the facilities after school hours and at weekends and the local rugby club has its clubhouse on site.

After some periods of instability and poor outcomes, NCS was proud to earn its first ever Good judgment from Ofsted in 2015, two years after joining GST. Sadly, the new framework judged the quality of education to require improvement in 2019 (though other aspects remain Good) which means the staff team, supported by the Trust, have work to do to re-gain Good and rapidly progress to Griffin Great via Ofsted Outstanding.

We love sport at NCS and host the annual Griffin Sports Festival which brings teams from every school into fierce competition every September. The Trust’s Director of Sport is based at our school. We are growing our traditions in the arts and have a successful and popular art department as well as strong interest in music and drama. We take part in the annual Shakespeare Schools Festival, a National Theatre project, and stage regular school productions. Our students sing in the Griffin Schools Choir and we are beginning to prepare for the Trust 10 year anniversary which will bring all schools together in one location to celebrate our family history.

We are proud of our school, its local history and its connections with eleven other GST schools in Bedworth, Nuneaton, Birmingham Dudley, Worcester, London and Medway.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Alison Ramsay

Executive Head

About the Griffin Schools Trust

The Griffin Schools Trust (GST) is a family of ten primary and two secondary schools in the Midlands, London and South East. We have a strong track record in making schools much better for children and their families and for the staff who work with us. Our single most important mission is to provide the conditions in which children discover who they are and then go on confidently to take their places in society, making a contribution to the world through the use of their talents. We will never prepare children to know their places.

When schools decide to join us they bring their histories to us and together we turn them into traditions reflecting the Trust’s mission and values whilst preserving and extending the each school’s individuality. We offer a rich curriculum and an unusual range of enrichment and extension clubs and activities. We also have shared traditions so that children form every school feel part of the same family. Every summer term we hold the Griffin Arts Festival. In the spring we have Founders Day and the Science Symposium and in the autumn students compete in the Griffin Science Symposium. All these festivals are linked in an annual theme schools’ four houses compete for a Trust cup which is awarded to the house colour which has accumulated most points from all Trust events. All staff, including the CEO, belong to a house.

Great GST schools have nothing institutional about them and great GST staff are thoughtfully recruited for their excellent knowledge and their broad interests. They are developed by Heads as well as the research and training opportunities offered across the Trust to add their individual magic to the mix. All our schools practice open and distributed leadership and place a high value on creativity as well as growing great talent pipelines to ensure that there are plenty of opportunities for promotion within and beyond the school.

Look at our website and click through to some of the schools as well as the one to which you are applying. We are frequently told that colleagues have found their professional home at GST. Is it yours? We look forward to hearing from you.

Anne Powell

Chief Executive Officer