Sir William Ramsay School

The school was founded in 1976, and named after Nobel Prize winning scientist Sir William Ramsay, who lived in Hazlemere until his death in 1916. Each year has six forms, though, during 2015/16 a 7th form was introduced due to the increase of students attending the school. Sir William Ramsay has three houses; Blake, Nash and Hepworth. Each house has its own colour with Blake being blue, Nash, red and Hepworth green. Each form is an individual house. In September 2012 Mr Mark Mayne took over from Miss Gaynor Comber as head teacher. He later left in July 2016 and was replaced by deputy headteacher Mr Chris Carter as Acting Headteacher. Mrs Christine McLintock then took over as headteacher from September 2017.

It was awarded specialist school status as a Visual Arts College by the Department for Education and Skills in September 2000.[3]

In 2007, the school opened a multi-million pound performing arts centre. The first performance given by pupils was the musical Grease.[4]

In August 2011 the school became an Academy.[5]

In 2016, the school received £4m from the Government to build an extension, which has 3 new science labs, a lift, 8 maths rooms and a new Sixth Form centre. This was officially opened by Leigh-Anne-Pinnock, ex-pupil and Little Mix star when the school reopened in 2017.

In 2022, the school's headteacher, Christine McLintock, announced her resignation[6] and was succeeded by Mr Paul Ramsey. McLintock remained as the school's Executive Headteacher until July 2022.

In June 2022, Sir William Ramsay School underwent a full Ofsted inspection, where it was rated 'Inadequate', following a monitoring visit in 2021. The report[9] described the arrangements for safeguarding as "not effective" and indicated that the school has "high incidence of serious behaviour incidents". In addition, the curriculum was described as "not always delivered well" in some subjects. According to the inspection report, the school has a good Sixth Form provision with high quality facilities for students to use.

Ofsted completed a further monitoring inspection of Sir William Ramsay School in March 2023. The report highlighted the "serious weaknesses" despite a "strengthened" safeguarding team and improvements to behaviour.

All pupils wear a navy blue tie with the new mixed circle crest, alongside a white shirt, navy jumper or cardigan (optional) and a navy blazer with the school crest on the left pocket. Girls can either wear a box pleat dark grey skirt or dark grey tailored trousers. Boys wear dark grey tailored trousers. Boys must wear grey or black socks and girls must wear black or white socks. For P.E., boys can either wear the aqua and navy airflow P.E. shirt or the school rugby navy shirt. They can wear this with crested shorts or a crested/navy tracksuit. Girls also wear the Aqua and navy airflow P.E. top with either crested shorts, a crested skirt, navy sport leggings or a crested/navy tracksuit. In football, they must wear the navy and Aqua SWR football socks and for hockey and rugby, they must wear a mouth guard.

Ramsay has a recently built drama building containing media and music classrooms and private practising rooms. It also has a lift for anyone with a disability, the school assembly hall and classrooms for languages. The science and math block has 18 classrooms in total, 10 for science and 8 for Maths, there is a lift included. The rest of the school is one level. There is also a building each for ICT, art technologies and humanities, 2 buildings for English, a sports hall, fitness studio and tennis courts for P.E. There is also a canteen, a drama theatre, a hearing impaired unit, a disabled unit and a playing field.

On starting at the school, year sevens get to do Spanish which is usually different from primary schools. All lessons are one hour long and follow a two-week timetable, with essential lessons, e.g. Maths, English and Science featuring the most. GCSEs are chosen in year 9 with Maths, Science, English, P.E. and PSHE as compulsory subjects. The school offers four techs; Textiles, Resistant Materials, Engineering and Food Tech. The school also offers many extra curriculum clubs.

The school has a unit for deaf pupils, known as the HARP and a unit for disabled and special needs pupils known as the SEN. The majority of the school is on one level and has many ramps making it helpful for disabled pupils. The pupils enrolled in the SEN and HARP are often merged into an ordinary classroom with an LSA, so are also registered on the normal register, though they may go back to SEN occasionally instead of doing a lesson. SEN pupils may also sometimes do private lessons in subjects with only a few other pupils who are also struggling with that lesson. Those pupils are not necessarily always SEN.

• Adam Paul Harvey, actor who played Tom Brake in Night and Day, Ralph Henshaw in Bedtime and Nathan Boothe in Where the Heart Is. More recently he has acted in two films: My Brother Tom (2001) and Son of Rambow (2007).
• Leigh-Anne Pinnock, former Head Girl and member of X Factor 2011 winners Little Mix.[10]