page_title: Knights Templar School
section_title: Recent years
hierarchical_section_title: Knights Templar School / Recent years
caption_attribution_description: English: The Duchess of Cornwall talks to students from the Knights Templar School in Baldock
context_page_description: Knights Templar School is a co-educational secondary school with academy status located in the market town of Baldock in North Hertfordshire, England. In a February 2006 Ofsted report, the school was described as "outstanding", one of only eight secondary schools in Hertfordshire to be so recognised. It retained its "outstanding" status following a further Ofsted inspection in February 2009. The Knights Templar School gained academy status on 1 April 2011. Following an Ofsted inspection in October 2012 the school was categorised as "good" against a newer, far more demanding Inspection framework.
  In September 2019 the school celebrated its 80th anniversary.
context_section_description: The Knights Templar School received coverage in the national media  in 2002 over the 'fixing' of 'A' level grades by examination boards. The school was the first in the country to appeal the grades awarded to its students in GCE Psychology.
  From 2005 to 2013 it was a specialist school for Sport and the Performing Arts. In 2005 students from the school appeared as extras in the television film Tom Brown's Schooldays starring Alex Pettyfer and Stephen Fry.
  In July 2007 the school's Art Department gained the Guinness World Record for Painting by Numbers.
  Guest speakers at the school have included former politician Edwina Currie, film and television composers David Arnold and Debbie Wiseman, Cardinal Basil Hume, academic Professor Lord Soulsby, IVF pioneer Peter Brinsden, scientist Professor Sir John Polkinghorne, Professor Mick Aston from Time Team, former Cabinet Minister Lord MacGregor, two-times Olympic silver medallist Jonathan Glanfield, journalist and author Quentin Letts, musician, journalist and priest Richard Coles, businessman and civil servant Sir Peter Gershon and actor Shane Richie.
  The Hoosiers performed an acoustic gig at the school in March 2011, and actor and performer Gerald Charles Dickens has made several appearances at the school in his one-man shows, including A Christmas Carol, based on the works of his great-great-grandfather Charles Dickens.
  In June 2012 a group of students from the school met the Duchess of Cornwall as they had volunteered to help apply SmartWater to Baldock's war memorial in order to protect it from theft by metal thieves.
  In February 2014 it was announced that the school's Headteacher from September 2014 would be Mr Timothy Litchfield, formerly Deputy Headteacher of Bishops Stortford High School and a specialist musician.
  On 14 June 2014 Mr John Glover, the then Head of the Humanities Faculty and Co-ordinator for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme, was appointed MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to Education. The award was in recognition of the more than 30 years voluntary service Mr Glover had given to running the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme at the school.  Under his supervision over 2000 students from the Knights Templar School received awards from the scheme.
caption: The Duchess of Cornwall talks to students from the school in 2012
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