St Michael's Catholic High School 3.44

Saint Michael's Catholic High School is a secondary school with academy status located in the town of Watford, Hertfordshire. A Section 5 Ofsted inspection in October 2007 and a Section 48 Inspection by the Archdiocese of Westminster in November 2007 both judged the school as outstanding. In September 2010, headteacher John Murphy was succeeded by Edward Conway.HistorySaint Michael's Catholic High School was founded by the Dominican Sisters in 1955, opening its gates for the first time in September of the same year. The choice of location was a direct result of an influx of families moving out of Central and North West London to South Hertfordshire, many of whom were of Irish and/or Italian descent. Before Saint Michael's opened, there was no Roman Catholic Secondary School in the county. This caused considerable challenges to the existing Holy Rood Primary School, which provided education to the age of 14. The opening of St Michael's was planned in conjunction with new feeder primaries.The school became a comprehensive school in 1966, thus catering for the full range of student abilities. This brought with it the first significant enlargement of the facilities. The science laboratories and new classrooms supplemented the original main corridor as part of the restructuring. In the 1990s the school spent a period of time under grant-maintained schools status. This led to the construction of the current administration block. Since 2000 there has been considerable upgrading of existing buildings in addition to construction of completely new wings. The first of these was the Saint Martin de Porres wing which houses the English department and Drama Studio. Next came a floodlit astroturf, providing all-weather outdoor sports facilities. Then came Saint Mary's wing, housing the Geography department and a media centre.