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EmmaRiddle · #1 (**permalink**) 05-20-2004, 11:08 AM

[img]http://www.snitchseeker.com/images/news/mcgonagall_grades_80.jpg' align='middle'> British School impliments Hogwarts House System -

Summary:
The BBC reports a school in the UK has used the Hogwarts House system to try to improve academic achievements and lower bad behaviour.

Article:

British School impliments Hogwarts House System

Quote:

A house points systems is achieving a "vast improvement" in pupils' behaviour, says a head teacher.

His Harry Potter-style system of putting pupils into houses has been used in a school in one of the country's most deprived areas.

The head of Gateway Community College in Tilbury says the success of the house system has proved wrong the "inverted snobs" who were against it.

The school has also introduced a strict uniform policy.

Gateway Community College has replaced two failing schools - where more than 90% of the pupils left with fewer than the benchmark of five good GCSEs.

Against such a daunting history of failure, head teacher Mark Morrell says that in his first year he has tried to radically change the whole culture of the school.

As part of this he has put in place a system of four houses, named after castles - Windsor, Leeds, Rochester and Dover - with points and prizes for the most successful.

Brothers and sisters will be put into the same houses as their siblings and the sports day will be like a "mini-Olympics" in which the houses will compete.

Mr Morrell says pupils have been really motivated by this structure - which particularly rewards involvement in the school's non-academic and after-school events, such as sports and clubs.

"We're using the house system to encourage pupils to invest in the life of the school - rather than treating the school as an enemy," he said.

"There had been times when behaviour was out of control - but with the same kids and the same staff, there has now been a vast improvement in behaviour."

Putting in place the house points system was intended as a positive way of recording pupils' contributions - and as a deterrent for misbehaviour.

But he said he had to overcome a "kind of inverted snobbery, a sense of political correctness and accusations of elitism" against a system associated with independent and traditional grammar schools.

There were also initial complaints about a strict enforcement of a uniform policy - but he says pupils soon accepted the changes and the "feel of the school is fundamentally different".

And he says there is no reason why such schools should not borrow ideas from the private sector or anywhere else - as long as the ideas work.

The school will get its first GCSE results this summer - and the head is anticipating that academic improvements will match the improved behaviour.

BBC

KAZ · 05-20-2004, 12:51 PM

this is a good ider,

at my first secondary school we had a house point system and house prefects and stuff.

but it was never used that much, but i have not been back there for while now so i dont know if the system was still running
We didnt have house ties or anythin it was just 2 random form goes into whatever house and if you chose u could were a little cloured badge to identifie your house

altough there is a school near me that take a house point system very seriously, that have diffrent uniforms depending on there house lol

unfortunatly my newer school has not got this system

i hope this school has as much luck as we did :flowersmile:

i wonder what there houses will be?

ours were local area towns

Hatfield Me
Wobern
Alysbury
Tring

good luck to them!!

Kazters · 05-20-2004, 02:39 PM

i am 22 and both the primary schools and my secondry school had poinst and houses it isnt a new thing and it was popular before HP.

SlytherinPride · 05-20-2004, 04:00 PM

My secondary school sorta did that, but not really. Each of the grades had their own colours (9,10,11,12) and there were rivalries between all of them, considering we had to achieve points and such. It reminded me of Hogwarts a bit, but, yeah, the system has been around before Harry Potter.

vietgirlz_8706 · 05-20-2004, 04:15 PM

that sounds like a great idea. :sorcerer:

Swizzlestick · 05-20-2004, 06:38 PM

Yeah my school had those aswell, we had four houses named after famous authors:

Austin, Kingsley, White and Dickens.

I was in Kingley - we were Yellow. :flowersmile:
Austin was blue, White was Red and Dickens was green. We Competed alot against each-other but it was a really strict school anyway, and the exam grades were really high.

EmmaRiddle · 05-20-2004, 07:32 PM

In Wales we had

Duffrig
Morgan
Daffyd (or Grufudd)
Dewi

I think and then there was the colours...

Melyn
Coch
Gytheredd (My spelling is atrocious there! Sorry!

)
Glas

greek_snitch · 05-20-2004, 08:40 PM

Oh, that' s a brilliant idea. :up:. And there are people, including some in my country,

that believe Harry Potter can make children evolved in the occult off_topic

bageLiciouss · 05-20-2004, 08:49 PM

I wish my school would do that! It sounds like it would be fun too!

funky monkey · 05-21-2004, 10:42 AM

in all my schools ive had houses.. why is so weird??
in my primary school, we had
lawson - blue
mackeller - red
patterson - green
kendall - yellow

then my high school
which i have forgotten

and the high school that im currently at
spiller - yellow
fitzgerald - blue
norris - green
and red wa..umm.... i cant remember lol!!

well anyway, i dont see why its so wewird to have house points, and why they ar ethinking because one school wants to follow, that its from harry potter...... i odnt think that sentirely true

greek_snitch · 05-21-2004, 04:37 PM

To Funky Monkey:

Well, probably it is common in schools , at least in the English-speaking countries, to put pupils in ' houses ' . But I haven' t heard something like that in my country.

05-21-2004, 08:40 PM

We never had houses at my schools. Well of course except between me and my friends, tee hee. Oh well.

Caligurl06 · 01-02-2005, 09:11 AM

I'm not British, but at my primary school we didn't have Houses, we had teams. I was on the Eagles. The teams would compete in the spring for the title of the school champion doing all sorts of wacky games (like shaving a balloon and whichever team still had no popped balloons they got 10 pts), it was really fun.