Thomas Bennett Community College

Thomas Bennett Community College (TBCC) is a secondary school with academy status for pupils aged 11 to 19. It caters to approximately 1200 pupils in Years 7 to 14, including 160 in its sixth form. Thomas Bennett Community College offers GCSEs and BTECs for pupils aged 11 to 16. Students in the sixth form have the option to study from a range of A-levels, further BTECs, CTECs and NVQ Diplomas. History The school was planned as part of the development of Crawley as a new town in the late 1940s. Originally it had been intended to open a grammar school and two secondary modern schools on the Tilgate campus, although by the time the school was built, this plan changed to provide a bilateral secondary school for boys and girls for a trial period of two years. This entitled the school to run separate grammar and secondary modern departments as part of one school. The school was named after Sir Thomas Bennett, the chairman of Crawley Development Corporation. This body had overseen the development of the New Town. Bennett officially opened the school in 1959 (the first pupils having joined the school in 1958). Although originally intended as a bilateral school, the staff of the school organised classes along comprehensive lines, with students working in sets depending on their ability in subjects, rather than broad streams. This idea proved so popular that the school became formally comprehensive by the end of the trial in 1960. By 1965, the school became one of the first in England to succeed in being truly comprehensive, with encouraging exam results, including disadvantaged children helped to fulfil their potential.