The Nelson Thomlinson School is a Comprehensive

Comprehensive school

A comprehensive school is a state school that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude. This is in contrast to the selective school system, where admission is restricted on the basis of a selection criteria. The term is commonly used in relation to the United...

 Secondary School

Secondary school

Secondary school is a term used to describe an educational institution where the final stage of schooling, known as secondary education and usually compulsory up to a specified age, takes place...

 located in the market town of Wigton

Wigton

Wigton is a small market town and civil parish outside the Lake District, in the administrative county of Cumbria in England, and traditionally in Cumberland. It is the bustling and thriving centre of the Solway Plain, situated between the Caldbeck Fells and the Solway coast...

, Cumbria

Cumbria

Cumbria , is a non-metropolitan county in North West England. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local authority, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumbria's largest settlement and county town is Carlisle. It consists of six districts, and in...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The school's motto is the Latin phrase Fide et Operis, "By faith and works". The position of Headmistress has been occupied by Janet Downes since September 2008.

Students

As with many older British Secondary schools, The Nelson Thomlinson School has a prefect system drawn from the Sixth Form. However, instead of one Head Prefect or a Head Boy & Girl pair, there are five Head Prefects who each take charge on a particular day of the week. Former pupils of the school include TV presenter Melvyn Bragg

Melvyn Bragg

Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg FRSL FRTS FBA, FRS FRSA is an English broadcaster and author best known for his work with the BBC and for presenting the The South Bank Show...

 and BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 newsreader Anna Ford

Anna Ford

Anna Ford is a retired English journalist and television presenter, best known as a newsreader....

.

Achievements

The school enters students in the GCSE and A-Level examinations. Around 70% of pupils achieve 5 or more A*-Cs each year in GCSE examinations, and in terms of A-Level results, the school has been rated in the country's top 40 comprehensive school since 1997 . In a 2006 Ofsted

Office for Standards in Education

The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills is the non-ministerial government department of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools In England ....

 inspection the school was judged to be an Outstanding school.

Young Enterprise

The school's Young Enterprise teams have also performed especially well in the Young Enterprise competition over the past few years.

In 2003/04, the company "Panacea" won the Young Enterprise Carlisle Area Board prize for the first time in the school's history. Their awards included Carlisle Area Board Champions 2004, Best Trade Stand at the Easter Trade Fair, Best Company Report, Best Presentation, and First Place at the Exhibition Evening. A Panacea company member, Adam Scott, also won the Individual Achiever of the Year award. The team's gross revenue was £1610.58, which was the highest gained by all known competitors that year.

Panacea then progressed to the Cumbria County Finals in Kendal, but did not progress to the next round.

In the 2006/2007 academic year, the Young Enterprise team "Eläin" won three awards in the North Cumbria round: "Best Company Report", "Best Trade Stand", and "Best Overall Company" as well as second place for "Best Company Presentation". In the county round, the team won "Best Company Presentation", the "ICSA Good Governance Award", and won third place for "Best Trade Stand". The team came third for "Best Overall Company" in Cumbria. Eläin focused primarily on personalised goods for families and pets and was the largest team the school has yet entered into the competition, with eighteen members.

In the 2007/2008 academic year, NTS entered "Bagcycle" as the Young Enterprise entry. The team won first place at the December trade fair, and second place at the Cumbria Area award ceremony.

The Young Enterprise team for the 2008-2009 school year is Veg-Eco, the team performed well at the regional finals, progressing to county finals in April 2009.

History

The Thomlinson Girls School (formed from Westmoreland House owned by Isaac Pattinson and named after the cotton manufacturer John Thomlinson, and now known as the Thomlinson Junior School on The Goose Market) and The Nelson School for Boys (formed from Floshfirld House), which were both grammar schools and had opened in 1899, merged in 1953 to form the Nelson Thomlinson Grammar School. This school merged with Wigton Secondary School (a secondary modern school

Secondary modern school

A secondary modern school is a type of secondary school that existed in most of the United Kingdom from 1944 until the early 1970s, under the Tripartite System, and was designed for the majority of pupils - those who do not achieve scores in the top 25% of the eleven plus examination...

) in 1969 to form the Nelson Thomlinson Comprehensive School.

The Professional Development Room/Department

Arising from a successful bid for Mathematics and Computing College Status, the school has included a room specifically designed for lesson observation. It might look like an ordinary classroom; the only apparently unusual feature is a large mirror set into one of the walls. What appears to be a mirror, however, is actually a piece of one-way glass, Behind the glass is an observation booth, from which a teacher, or group of teachers, can observe the lesson and quietly discuss what is happening.