Range High School
Range High School is an 11-18 co-educational comprehensive school, currently with a staff number of 90 and over 1250 students on roll. It was opened as a newly built school in 1976 by the Bishop of Liverpool at the time, the Rt. Revd. David Sheppard. Range is now a specialist school for Mathematics and Computing and has consistently high standards both academic and pastoral, commended as outstanding by OFSTED. It has recently been granted academy status. Range is situated on the edge of Formby in the parish of St Luke’s. The Head Teacher is Mr Graham Aldridge.
There have been loose informal links between St Luke’s and the school for many years, but these have become more formalised recently. This has been possible with St Luke’s and Range both having a named person to act as a link contact on each other’s behalf. Currently, this is Mr Andy Mackenzie (Community Cohesion Co-ordinator) at Range and Mr Ken Davies (Communications’ Committee PCC Member) at St Luke’s.
Over the past several years the school-church links have witnessed –
- Considerable technical help from the school with the monthly collation of the church magazine.
- Range has regularly submitted 2/3 articles for the church magazine annually.
- Numerous printing of posters and flyers for St Luke’s, and also on behalf of the wider church community in Formby & District (Churches Together) for special events like the Christmas Village Nativity in December and the free Fun Day in the local park in August for children of primary school age.
- Various Range links have been established with Groupe Scolaire School in Shyira, Rwanda – the Rwandan school being in the parish of St Mark’s, Shyira, the latter having a strong and established link with St Luke’s. Two 6th Form students visited Shyira with a leading group from St Luke’s in February 2011, with four staff and students in total from Groupe Scolaire returning to Formby with the group and spending some time in Range during their two week stay. They led three year group assemblies of about 200 students each time, each time telling them of their life in Shyira. An agreement was signed at the end of their visit promising closer co-operation between the two schools. (Range was awarded the International School Award 2008-2011 and recently re-accredited until 2014).
- The school has made financial donations from charity collections to the Shyira Trust (see elsewhere on website).
- Range students have taken photographs for St Luke’s Church calendar on two past occasions, the latest being for the 2012 calendar depicting sporting action and events, very apt with 2012 being Olympic Year in London. It was a joint production between church and school involving many Range pupils and staff and also representatives from St Luke’s. All proceeds from the calendar sales were equally divided between the Teenage Cancer Trust (Range) and the Shyira Trust (St Luke’s).
This secondary school-church link has blossomed over the years, with its obvious reciprocal benefits. It has great potential to grow, with total respect to Range from St Luke’s with the school having a multi-faith policy. St Luke’s will always be there for anyone in the school requiring spiritual strength and support.