A Spalding school will forge new links with schools around the world when it becomes an academy in January.
It’s the latest seismic shift for the fledgling Sir John Gleed School.
When Janet Daniels applied for the job as headteacher of Gleed Girls’ Technology College in Spalding she didn’t even know there was an adjoining boys’ school.
She got her feet under the desk in January last year at the girls’ site and by November found herself head of both schools when they merged.
In charge of 1,300 pupils and 200 staff, Mrs Daniels continues to steer the school through massive changes.
The school has almost completed a £750,000 remodelling that has finally turned adjoining schools into one building with walls knocked through to create continuous corridors on the upper and lower floors.
A hairdressing salon for pupils as young as 14 to learn a trade is the latest addition to a string of improvements that has seen the school increase the size of classrooms, create dedicated IT suites for each year group and provide three new food outlets, including two outdoor eateries.
The school will convert to an academy under the wing of educational trust CfBT and all staff will be able to transfer to the new organisation.
Locally that will forge educational partnerships with academies such as The Deepings and Stamford’s Queen Eleanor, academies across the UK and, more exciting still, schools around the world.
Mrs Daniels said: “We hope to be able to build links with schools all over the world, South Africa and all sorts of countries, so our young people can see themselves as global citizens.”
• Janet Daniels is preparing students for a changing world of work and says: “We need to give our young people the skills to become independent learners so they can adapt to new ways of working that we haven’t even seen yet.” The school’s emphasis on IT – and its ambition to forge educational ties with schools across the world – may pave the way for distance working as well as distance learning. Students could then work for companies in the USA, or anywhere, while living in Spalding.