Brooke Weston was delighted to welcome the Secretary of State for Education, the Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, who toured the school, seeing lessons in progress and speaking to students and staff.

Mr Gove and Mr Tom Pursglove, the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Corby and East Northants, were welcomed by Principal Trish Stringer and Dr Andrew Campbell, CEO of the Brooke Weston Trust.

Mr Gove's first stop was with tutor group 7K who were having a Spanish lesson with teacher Louise Pape and Head of Languages, Melanie Navarro-Marin. The students were having a carousel lesson where they moved around activities including translations, reading, dictation and writing.

Then the entourage moved on to Science where Year 12 chemistry students were undertaking titration experiments under the direction of Mr Paul Knight, Head of Science. Again the Secretary of State spoke to the students about their work, their experiments and asked some of the newcomers the reasons why they chose to join the Sixth Form here.

After the visit Principal Trish Stringer said: ‘We were immensely delighted to welcome Mr Gove along to Brooke Weston, to give him a real taste of the day-to-day teaching and learning that goes on here. He was incredibly interested, not only in the subjects the students were being taught, but also in the students' opinions of their studies here. He took the time to speak to many of them individually which they really appreciated.’

As he left Mr Gove said: ‘When Tom invited me to come and visit Brooke Weston, of course I knew that the school is outstanding, but I was incredibly impressed both by the foreign language teaching and .... the A Level chemistry teaching ... it was just at an amazingly high level. The children clearly are having an enjoyable time and are encouraged to be ambitious. I think that Corby is fortunate to have such a brilliant school.’