Derby Moor Community Sports College

School System

The current school system uses 'vertical tutoring' where there are representatives from all years (7-11) in the form groups, with houses instead of years being used. There are five houses, taking inspiration from the Olympic values and rings, these are; Solidarity (Red), Participation (Black), Honour (Yellow), Dedication (Blue) and Spirit (Green). Each house has its own 'house manager' who looks after the eleven forms within the house.

On 1 January 2010 the school became a Foundation School this allowed the school greater control over its finances. At the same time it established a trust (Derby Pride Trust) which has charitable status. The trust partners are, at the moment, Derby County Football Club, Ivy House Special School, NHS Derby City and Derby City Council Sport & Leisure. A joint venture, as part of the trust, between Derby Moor and DCFC will see the Derby Pride Academy open as the first free school in Derby.

Curriculum

The houses of the school; Solidarity, Participation, Honour, Dedication and Spirit, are linked with different areas of the curriculum or faculty, meaning that the forms are based in a certain subject area with the form tutor teaching within it. The houses correspond as follows:

Buildings from 1964-2011

The first buildings on the site were built in the 1960s, consisting of Stenson (prefabricated concert panels and steel construction) and Derwent (steel and brick construction). These were built for the former Derby School, and the Derwent building contained several kinds of memorabilia from the old school site, including war memorials, honours boards in the hall with lists the achievements of former pupils, and a mosaic in the entrance hall of the school's badge and motto.

In 1992 there was a fire in part of the Stenson building, resulting in demolition of the damaged area. A new building, Cromford, was constructed on the tennis courts that were close to the entrance of the school, with the area that had been cleared becoming new tennis courts. The Cromford building was opened in 1993 by local member of parliament Margaret Beckett. The Markeaton building was built in 1999 to house The Millennium Centre, it consisted of terrapin blocks that had been linked together. Other temporary buildings were added to the site as the school outgrew its capacity, includjng the music block and seclusion area. Following a grant in the mid-2000s, an astroturf pitch was constructed on the south side of the site, together with extra changing rooms, and a few years later a gym, which was built thanks to a grant from Sport England because of Ivy House Special School being built on one of the top fields to the north.

Building Schools for the Future

Derby Moor is taking part in the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) program, being one of the test schools for Derby City along with Noel-Baker Community School. The school is having a partial refurbishment and a partial new build, the cost of this being £19 million, with some £3 million of this to be spent on IT equipment. The new building and refurbishment has been designed by HawkinsBrown as the main architects, Fabric as landscape architects and Cundall Johnston and Partners as the structural, mechanical and electrical engineer. These companies partnered with Balfour Beatty to win preferred bidder status in 2010.

The new building was designed to link together Derwent building and what was to remain of Stenson building, after it was decided that these two were to be kept. The remainder of Stenson's fabric was too damaged to be of use and Cromford, due to its construction methods, had inefficient energy usage and poor acoustics. The new building, known as the Learning Barn would provide many of the more complex facilities such as the science and technology labs and ICT suites. This allows the older buildings to provide what they are able to in terms of learning spaces as they are restricted due to the arrangement of the original steel work. The rooms and facilities are grouped in accordance with the house system; Dedication, Honour, Solidarity, Spirit and Participation respectively. There is a 'Hub' area in each faculty containing IT facilities and open learning space. In addition to this there is a main hub that contains the dining area, Flexible Learning Centre (which contains the library and IT facilities) and the sixth form centre (The Millennium Centre).

After uncertainty around whether funding would be given due to spending cuts by the UK Government, construction started in January 2011. In January 2012 the PACE faculty opened, this being contained in what remains of Stenson building, this included the refurbished sports hall. The rest of the building was due to open in September 2012, but due to rusting within the existing frames of Derwent building extended foundational works had to be carried out, delaying the opening. These foundational problems were found when stripping the back of Derwent building within the process of refurbishment, the problems couldn't have been identified earlier as this would have required an intrusive survey which could not be possible to be carried out when the building was a learning environment. After the refurbishment was fully completed, the demolition of the other buildings was to commence afterwards. The school opened in January 2013 and the official opening ceremony took place on 28 June 2013 as a community event.

Notable former pupils