Hannah Gray chats to the Voyager School headteacher Hugh Howe to find out how he feels the last 12 months have gone.

From the moment you see its striking blue exterior, you know there is something special about Voyager.

This is not what the schools of our childhood looked like, but then the background to the school was not one many of us would have experienced.

Voyager was the coming together of pupils from Bretton Woods and Walton community schools, and between those two groups of pupils, there were about 30 other languages spoken.

Now, one year after it opened, headteacher Hugh Howe believes there is much to be happy about.

He said: "I think we have many things we can feel proud about. The first year we always knew would be pretty challenging. I think probably the biggest positive we've got is the way in which the pupils have come together from two different schools and have joined together as pupils of the Voyager School," he said.

He admits, however, that ensuring this could happen was a complex task.


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Education: news, information and features including a feature on The Voyager School.


Hugh said: "We did some work before we opened, some transitional work. We had some activities that tried to bring together a particular year group from the two schools.

"It's always impossible to bring together all the children but there were key young people from each year group that were able to meet and share ideas."

These activities included visits to the building site as the school took shape, and being involved in the design of the uniforms as well as interviewing the supplier and being involved in the launch of the uniform.

The school also had a joint student council for eight months, which has now carried through to representation on the governing body.

As well as making sure the children came together as individuals, there was also the small matter of making sure their education was not adversely affected.

"One of the things we had to try to do was maintain and ensure that the courses that they had started would continue and there would be the provision for that to happen," Hugh said.

"That was a particular challenge as we volunteered to the local authority to receive all Year 11 pupils, even though it put us over our capacity, and to maintain their chosen courses with the maximum staff continuity, which was logistically challenging."

Because it is such a striking building, Hugh admits there was, and continues to be, a sense of awe from the pupils.

"The building itself challenges a lot of what we would talk of in terms of traditional schools.

"There are some very innovative features and some very traditional features. We wanted to ensure that the best building in the community was a school. There was that sense of interest and that sense of awe about the building."

There was always the possibility that the excitement about the building could prove to be something of a distraction for the pupils.