Truro School

Truro School is a coeducational independent day and boarding school in the city of Truro, Cornwall, England, UK. It is the largest coeducational independent school in Cornwall with over 1050 pupils from pre-prep to sixth form. It is a member School of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference of Leading Independent Schools.

Admission

Pupils must sit an entrance exam, the equivalent of an 11+ exam; although some pupils take the equivalent 13+ exam as certain local schools still teach up to year 9. Academic, and occasionally music, artistic or sports scholarships, are also awarded as well as are means-tested bursaries.

Site and facilities

Built on a hilltop overlooking Truro, the senior school's campus' facilities include the school chapel, Burrell Theatre, a covered and heated swimming pool, two gymnasiums, 40 acres of sports fields, tennis and squash facilities, an astro-turf pitch, the newly refurbished Dodd library, and the Sir Ben Ainslie Sports' Centre, opened by former pupil Ben Ainslie in 2013. The senior school is almost entirely situated on a hill and is not adapted for disabled students.

Curriculum

The school teaches the full range of arts, science and social science subjects to GCSE and A-Level. The sciences are taught as three separate subjects as this allows students a greater choice of A-Level options and beyond. From 2007/2008 onwards the three separate sciences became compulsory subjects for GCSE in place of the previous option to take up a combined science course in the 4th year. Geology has also been introduced as a GCSE option. French and German are both taught in the first, second and third year. All students are required to take a Humanities subject (History or Geography) and a foreign Language (French, German or Spanish). Physical Education (PE) becomes optional from fourth year onwards, but students can choose to take it at GCSE and A-level standard.

Boarding

Though the majority of students are day-pupils, there are also some 50 boarders, of whom a quarter are from overseas, including a dozen German exchange students who spend up to three terms in the Lower Sixth.

The school has four boarding houses– two for boys and two for girls:

• Malvern
• Pentreve
• Poltisco
• Trennick