Resources And Facilities
In This Section
Introduction
Classrooms and laboratories are grouped so that each academic Department has its teaching rooms,
resources, and offices gathered in a distinct area or separate building. Virtually every member of
staff has his or her own teaching room. The Departments are generously equipped with audio-visual
aids, television and video facilities, and computers. Many Departments have their own library and
reading room.New accommodation of a very high standard for the Economics, Geography, and History Departments was opened in summer 1992, and the expansion of the English Department was completed in the autumn of that year. A new Biology Department, on an extra floor within the Science block, was built in 1993.
Academic facilities include eleven Science laboratories (and further teaching rooms), a Science library, and a Science lecture theatre; a language laboratory and satellite receiving equipment in the Modern Languages Department; a very extensively equipped computing centre; a meteorological station; and, within the Art Department, a photographic darkroom with colour enlargers. The entire school is covered by a computer network, and the overall computer: pupil ration is now very close to 1:1. There are three main elements in the system; the provision of a PC in every classroom (and in many a data projector), and for every member of staff at home; the establishment of a Virtual Private Network (VPN), such that any member of staff and any boy can log in to the school's network from home, or from anywhere in the world; and the installation of a "thin client" system which provides a networked computer in every boarder's study. All boys have an email address, and there is ready access to the Internet, controlled by its restriction to reasonable working hours and the censorship by the most effective web-filtering software.
Art, Technology, Computing, and Electronics are housed in the new Vere Hodge Arts and Technology Centre (opened in 1996), which incorporates a major extension to the Music School as well as a reprographics centre and an exhibition area. The new E. M. Forster Theatre complex, opened in summer 2000, joins the Vere Hodge Centre to provide a unique integrated facility for all the creative and practical subjects and the performing arts.
The school is well provided with auditoria and lecture theatres with a range of capacities: the main Theatre auditorium (400), Big School (390), the Cawthorne Lecture Theatre (160), the Recital Room in the Music School (160), the lecture theatre in the Vere Hodge Centre (60), and the Science lecture theatre (50). There are full facilities for large-screen film and video projection in Big School and the Cawthorne Lecture Theatre. The Vere Hodge lecture theatre has computer display projection and full Dolby pro-logic surround sound.
