I am very proud to be the Headteacher of St John the Baptist School (SJB) and it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to our Career Site.

SJB is a community where every individual is highly valued and where care and concern for others is central to our work. We aim to blend academic learning with excellent pastoral care so that all students and staff thrive and feel successful.

Our Catholic ethos permeates throughout the school in how we treat each other and we value the opportunities for personal and community reflection that stems from celebrating our faith.

We are incredibly proud of our students! They are hardworking, well-behaved and enjoy both learning and spending time with each other and our staff. We work in a positive culture using consistent procedures and excellent systems. We are very proud of the quality of care our students receive alongside their academic education and strive to make all students’ time at school some of the happiest times of their lives.

At SJB we want our students to:

• Deepen their relationship with God
• Love learning
• Achieve their academic potential
• Have a wide range of experiences both in and out of the classroom
• Grow into happy, confident, resilient and articulate young people
• Leave SJB equipped to lead fulfilling lives and make a positive contribution to society

Our staff are vibrant, enthusiastic and passionate about ensuring our students get the very best deal. They work incredibly hard and are continually looking for ways to improve our provision. As a school we work hard to innovate and stay at the cutting edge of teaching and learning, and technology - all our staff and students have iPads that they use to support learning every day. 

Every Day is Open Day at SJB and visitors are always very welcome. Please do get in touch if you'd like to come and see us and the students here.

James Granville Hamshar

Headteacher

SJB is a highly successful, over-subscribed, mixed Catholic comprehensive school of approximately 1500 students. We are part of the Xavier Catholic Education Trust; a group of seventeen schools in the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton who have come together to work collaboratively for the benefit of all the children they serve. The Trust's aim is to provide a caring and supportive environment within which all children receive the best possible education.

We are located just outside Woking town centre, and a 15 minute walk from the train station (22 minutes from London Waterloo on the train). We have 240 students in each of Years 7 to 11 and over 350 in the Sixth Form.

Our staff are vibrant, enthusiastic and passionate about ensuring our students get the very best deal, and we work hard to ensure they are supported and cared for. The School Leadership Team see it as their role to serve the staff, and ensuring an effective work-life balance for all is key in that. Our staff enjoy working here because our standards, facilities and staff wellbeing are excellent; and because we like to have fun!

We are also exceptionally fortunate to work with such brilliant students; they are a pleasure to teach and make excellent progress. If you come to visit us, you will see that they are happy, hard-working and very positive about the school and learning. We want all our children to grow into happy, confident, resilient and articulate young people who leave SJB equipped to lead fulfilling lives and make a positive contribution to society. 

Technology at St John the Baptist School is a major part of teaching, learning and school/teacher administration. We have developed a strong 'can do' approach to supporting staff which encourages everyone to embrace the possibilities that technology has to offer within the school for teaching, learning or administration. Every child has their own iPad which they use to support their learning (as do teachers). We have developed several 'in-house' apps for both staff and students and are always seeking new opportunities to improve our use of technology. We are a designated Apple Distinguished School.

We are very committed to improving the whole school system and have a long-standing history supporting other schools and the development of teachers for many years as Teaching School and now as a lead school in the Xavier Teaching School Hub. We also lead the NEHS Maths Hub and have strong links with Teach South East SCITT. This means we are able to offer our staff new opportunities in: training future teachers; developing Maths teaching across all phases; and supporting local primary and secondary schools. We currently have a number of staff that work in a variety of capacities in other schools. We work hard to offer development to all stages of a teacher’s career; from initial teacher training to NPQH for prospective Headteachers.

We are very proud to have been recognised as “transforming” under the SSATs Framework for Exceptional Education in all twelve aspects of our practice including: climate for learning; culture of reflection; professional learning; variety of teaching; wellbeing and leadership through moral purpose. The first school in the country to do so!

Support for staff is exceptional and there are significant opportunities for professional development at all levels. The school is fully staffed, partly because staff know that they can concentrate on teaching and are very well supported. We have a well-established programme of support for newly appointed staff, which enables them to settle into the school routine quickly and effectively.

Xavier is currently comprised of 12 primary schools and 3 secondary schools across Surrey. We also run teacher training and leadership training.

We provide central services so that schools can concentrate on the important role of educating children rather than worrying about everything from licenses to legionella testing. Each of our schools has a local governing body and there is a board of Directors who oversee the schools.

To find out more about Xavier please click here