“It’s a great job – the best I ever had.

I once taught once in a Bristol Comprehensive with 2000 pupils on the roll and after three years I found there were still some pupils whose names I still didn't know. Here, you know everyone of them within months.

This school’s success?  Well, it’s remarkable, it’s rewarding, but it’s not rocket science.  The secret of this place is all down to class size.  It’s about identifying and meeting individual and personal needs.   These are things impossible to achieve in schools any larger than this.

I am proud of the response and the performance we get from our pupils. The results speak for themselves.  But you have to remember what many here have been through before they ever reached us.  They’ve known the misery and frustration of feeling themselves to be failures.

Our job is to help them overcome it all. To win their confidence. To enable them to find themselves, to express themselves verbally, to respect the parameters of behaviour that will help them take a place in the adult world that awaits.

What we require and what we get here is real commitment. The pupils put aside problems and make a genuine effort. They give of their best. What more could we ask?”

MARTIN LEE, Deputy Head at Shapwick, Joined the school in 2001