Welcome to the Helena Romanes School!

The Helena Romanes School and Sixth Form Centre is a fully comprehensive Specialist Humanities College situated in beautiful countryside, occupying approximately 35 acres just to the north of Great Dunmow.

Welcome to our new look website – we hope you find it easy to use.  All the same information is here.  If you have any questions regarding the content of this website please contact Richenda Whitehead at the school.

The name Helena Romanes came from the school's first Chair of Governors who had been closely involved in the development of education in the county. It began life on the current site in 1958. The school grew, new buildings were added and it became fully comprehensive in 1970.

The Helena Romanes School and Sixth Form Centre is situated in beautiful countryside, occupying approximately 35 acres just to the north of Great Dunmow. A state-of the-art Sports and Leisure Centre, shared with the local community, is located on site.

We are a mixed 11 - 18 (Foundation) Comprehensive School with over 1400 students on roll. In order to meet the needs of our growing community, we have invested in an expansion programme which will ensure that we are at the cutting edge of educational innovation. This includes our specialist Technology Block, Music rooms, ICT Suite and Learning Zone.

We count our links with the local community as one of our key strengths and from September 2004 we based our school crest on the coat-of-arms of Great Dunmow, with the kind consent of the Town Council.

• to ensure every student reaches their potential
• to provide a stimulating and challenging learning environment where every student feels encouraged and supported
• to foster a sense of responsibility and self-esteem in all our students
• to create a community where learning is seen as important and worthwhile

We will achieve these aims through working with students to:

• broaden their knowledge
• deepen their understanding
• develop their skills
• foster their creativity
• encourage positive attitudes

At the Helena Romanes School and Sixth Form Centre we seek to provide a broad and balanced curriculum which promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of students and prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life.


We aim to achieve this by ensuring that all our students follow a curriculum that is:

Broad: students benefit from a broad grounding, which will enable them to deal with the varied and complex nature of school, work, leisure and society.

Balanced: early specialisation might result in missed opportunities later. Students develop along different routes at different times in their school career. They often discover an aptitude or a liking for a subject they did not find compelling before.

Relevant: the content of lessons, the materials used and the tests we run are all directed at meeting the students' needs now and in the future.

Differentiated: students learn in different ways and at different speeds. Even those who excel in much of their schoolwork may have difficulties in one or two subjects. We support all according to need, including those who find learning hard as well as gifted individuals. From Year 8 onwards, in a steadily increasing number of subjects, students are allocated to a set appropriate to their stage of development in that subject.

Progressive: this simply means we do not let a syllabus stand still. There is constant change in what we teach and how we teach. This reflects new knowledge in all subjects from history to physics; new insights about how young people learn and new government initiatives.

Coherent: there is consistency across the curriculum, and opportunities are taken to connect each subject with others. For example, the story of apartheid and its aftermath would appear in History; in the Key Stage 4 course, Ethics, Life and Faith (ELF) and in English through African poetry.

There are a wide range of extra curricular activities in which students can be involved. These include lunchtime and after school groups with events ranging from PE to music, drama and ICT.

This section will be completed once the extra curricular programme for this year has been agreed.

In the meantime the following club programme has already been agreed for Autumn Term 2007/2008:

• Sport

This section contains all the information about the Specialist Humanities College status of the Helena Romanes School.

To view the Humanities newsletter, please click here

The Specialist College status is public recognition of our excellence in Humanities provision (particularly, English, History and Religious Studies). It allows us to build on the key values that we stand for as a school, further strengthening the learning community within the school and becoming active partners in the wider community promoting growth, development and above all life-long learning.

This section contains all the information regarding the Helena Romanes School Sixth Form, including:

• Sixth Form Centre
• Courses
• Exams
• Facilities
• Students
• Entry qualifications