The Cotswold School

About Us

The Cotswold School is a co-educational 11-18 comprehensive school, located in Bourton-on-the-Water.

There are about 1100 pupils in the school including over 200 in the sixth form.

We have a proven track record in helping pupils to attain the highest possible grades at GCSE and A Level and this is recognised in our recent Ofsted Inspection in which we were awarded the highest accolade as an outstanding school.

We have a thriving After School Science & Engineering Club and are keen to liaise with any individual or organisation that can improve the learning opportunities for our very eager and enthusiastic students.

For more details about the school see the school website (www.cotswold.gloucs.sch.uk)

Latest Activities

Barbie BobSkeleton Testing : November 2011

01st December 2011

Students constructed a model Bobskeleton, using a basic template design from The Royal Academy of Engineering. They then modified their design to investigate which bobskeleton could travel the furthest, using air power supplied by a pump. Subsequently, students modified their designs to accomodate a “Barbie” rider and measured the fastest time they could achieve travelling down a racetrack. STEM ambassadors Guy Speedie and David McClean from GE Aviation assisted with the project.

Cheltenham Science Festival : KS3 Day : June 2011

13th June 2011

Forty KS3 pupils attended an exciting trip to Cheltenham Festival of Science. The day began with a bang with an exciting “Life, Fire and Gas We Can’t See” presentation by chemist David Wharton, covering all the properties of various gases in the atmosphere. Next up was a robot building workshop run by Lego® Education. The challenge for the students was to detect the location of cracks in a long narrow pipe. This involved students constructing robots, programming them and then analysing the data the robots collected via data sensors as they travelled in and out of the tube. George Bridgwater, Ben Darwent and Will Burdett were the team coming up with the most accurate measurements. A well earned lunch was had in Imperial Gardens, with Theo Godfrey and Toby Abrey also completing the Discovery Trail. The BBC Science Zone was next on the agenda with Dr Yan from Bang Goes the Theory proving very popular with the autograph hunters! Final event of the day was the interactive Discovery Zone, with the students’ aim to complete as many as activities as possible, whilst claiming as many “freebies” as they could. Amongst the many activities to try, several students showed off their disco diva moves in The Dance Lab, generating some highly variable data which will be used in a national experiment. They also used their maths skills to decommission a nuclear reactor, looked at codes with GCHQ, investigated fermentation with the Society of Microbiology and constructed circuits with the Institute of Engineering & Technology. This was a really beneficial educational event that everyone involved thought was “fantastic”.

Girls in Science Day : Cheltenham Science Festival : June 2011

13th June 2011

Year 9 students Lucy Robbins, Emily Lay, Holly Woodcock and Fran Roxburgh had the unique opportunity of spending a day exploring some fascinating scientific topics alongside girls from several other Gloucestershire schools in an event hosted at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and sponsored by L’Oréal. Activities ranged from practical workshop sessions to a series of talks highlighting the potential of utilising their scientific skills within careers from women from a variety of companies and institutes. A practical session lead by the team from the Young Scientist Centre at the Royal Institution involved the team designing a crumple zone for a car using a crash test rig. The “crash” was filmed using a high speed camera and then replayed so students could evaluate the effectiveness of their design. A second workshop session focused on DNA and involved trying to identify if HRH Prince Phillip was related to the Prussian Royal family. Fran Roxburgh said “It was a really good experience to see how all the elements of science can combine and fit into everyday life”. The excellent event was rounded off with each participant cheerfully receiving a large bag of L’Oréal freebies.

National Grid / Smallpeice Trust Training Week April 2011

23rd May 2011

Six year 10 students completed a weeks residential training course at The National Grid training centre near Newark. Students worked in teams with students from other schools on a variety of tasks and challenges. The experience gave them the opportunity to see what it is like to work as an engineer and view potential career paths that could be available for them.