Durrington High School

History

This senior school is the product of a merger in 1973 of two neighbouring schools, with their playing fields divided by a single white line: Worthing County Secondary School for Girls (Rodmell Road site) and Worthing Technical High School (Boulevard site). The County Secondary School for Girls moved to the new brick built Rodmell Road building in 1953 from the historic Sussex Road school with Miss Lilian Belchamber continuing her distinguished career as the head mistress until the creation of Durrington High School in 1973. The Technical High moved to the Boulevard location in 1955 from Union Place Worthing and renamed Worthing Technical High School. The school building has now been rebuilt and extended considerably with the Technical High building demolished some years ago and many sections of the Rodmell Road building still standing and extended. Durrington High School continues to have the seahorse as their school crest which was the emblem of the County Secondary school. The school uniform has been modified over the years, including the re-introduction of compulsory school blazers in 2008. In 2015, education provision in Worthing was reorganised into the standard two-tier provision, with Durrington increasing its roll by extending to take pupils in Year 7 who had previous attended the local middle schools.

Campus

The school shares a campus with Oak Grove College Special School. The building is purpose-built, offering facilities for all subjects, including science labs, technology suites and a music department. There is also a large field in which cricket pitches and goal posts are set up, and a MUGA (Multi Use Games Arena) for 6 a-side leagues etc.

Curriculum

The school has a strong reputation for the performing arts. Under the direction of Paul Brown, a former pupil, who was Head of Drama & Creative Arts, Durrington High School was represented in the West End with pupils performing in the production of "Fire Costs" at the Lyric Theatre, London, October 1993 - a performance that was produced by the Home Office. The production was originally presented at the Connaught Theatre, Worthing in the Autumn of 1991 and was the result of a competition run by West Sussex Fire Brigade in which local schoolchildren were encouraged to submit stories based on the subject of fire. The winning entries were turned into a play by Paul Brown; Boundstone's Head of Drama, Tom Brown; the Connaught Theatre's Manager Stephen Holroyd and Mel Denman from West Sussex Fire Brigade. Durrington High was renowned for the quality of its drama department's public theatre productions, particularly under the team of Paul Brown, Hilary Lane and former head of music Richard Colbourne. During the course of the 1994/5 re-build, two high-quality Shakespearian productions were presented at the Barn Theatre, Field Place - including an open air Summer production of "The Tempest" and the pre-Christmas production of "Macbeth". The newly opened school included a purpose built drama studio,amphitheatre and overhaul of the existing Rodmell Hall stage. The exterior of the new drama studio (reminiscent of a mini version of Chicester's Minerva Theatre) includes stone heads representing Shakespearean characters that were designed by pupils who appeared in many of the productions during the 1994/5 school year. The school is a Rock Challenge Premier school and came 3rd in the Rock Challenge Southern Premier Final in June 2015; qualifying for the UK Rock Challenge National Final in July 2015.

Companies

Durrington High School pupils are divided into seven companies: Roddick, Shelley, Franklin, Mercator, Coubertin, Da Vinci and Hawking. All of these are named after famous people devoted to a certain subject or subjects, e.g. Franklin-Science and Music. There are tie colours to show which pupil belongs to which company. The colours are blue, purple, green, white, yellow, red and pink. There is a weekly assembly for each company. The purpose of the companies is to allow the younger and older students to bond together. The weekly company assembles include pupils from all years; replacing the traditional year group meetings, although sometimes there are year group meetings.

Notable former pupils

Harrison Reed Southampton FC player