Thomas Telford School 4.09

Thomas Telford School is a City Technology College in Telford, Shropshire and is sponsored by The Mercers Company and Tarmac Holdings Limited. The mixed ability school has consistently ranked as the top performing comprehensive school in England, and was the first to achieve a GCSE pass rate of 100% A*-C grades. The school was rated by Ofsted as a Grade 1 outstanding school during 2009.BackgroundThe school was founded in 1991 as the eighth of fifteen specialist CTCs set up to raise educational standards in inner-city areas. The catchment area includes Telford, Wolverhampton and the villages and suburbs in between. One of the school's initial main aims was to help relieve the under-performing schools in the urban areas of Wolverhampton. Thomas Telford School previously generated significant funds through the sale of its online curriculum content and qualifications sold through a subsidiary company TTSOnline Limited (Thomas Telford School Online Limited).Information technologyThe school has long been at the forefront of using IT for education, the school makes use of electronic whiteboards provided by Smart Technologies in all classrooms, learning bases and study rooms. In addition to this the school has an advanced internal network operating mainly using Novell and Windows Advanced Server 2003 products. The school also provides an extranet, which is run using Novell Virtual Office, allowing students and staff to access their files and e-mail from home.The school has at least 1 computer and interactive whiteboard in every classroom as well as around one hundred in each of the school's 4 ILC's (Independent Learning Centres). The school also has a state-of-the-art CAD/CAM suite; which provides access to a Roland CAM CNC milling and machining equipment and a set of 3D printers. The CAD/CAM suite also consists of an HP A1 Pantone printer, HP A3 colour laser printer and HP A3 inkject laser printer as well as the schools network of other laser printers. The CAD/CAM suite also houses around fifty computers for students to produce work on the various CAD packages the school has which includes the latest version of AutoDesk Inventor.