SEDBERGH School should be known for its academic and musical prowess and not just its performances on the sports field, says the school’s new head teacher.

Marlborough-educated Andrew Fleck has joined the famous rugby school from Ashville College, Harrogate, and said his first half term’s priority had been the students’ academic performance.

Mr Fleck has already restructured the senior management team to focus on ‘performance management’, a move which he took in consultation with the previous head teacher Christopher Hirst.

“I want to raise academic achievement. I am not going to diminish sport but I will celebrate the school’s music which I see to be just as good. I want there to be a commitment to all-round education,” he said.

A new music rehearsal room at Guldry Lodge is due to be completed by October 2011 which Mr Fleck said is a sign of the school’s commitment to musical education.

He will also review the school’s timetable and curriculum, where he wants to see a focus on enterprise and technology.

“With the Public Spending Review there will be huge challenges in the maintained sector, but there’s a big concern for wider educational issues,” he said. “Our pupils will leave school in the most demanding of circumstances and they are going to need that balance of academic success, technology and resilience in order to respond to the pressures that they are going to face.”

In the summer the school’s deputy head master Paul Wallace-Woodroffe commented that it had not been a ‘vintage year’ for the school’s GCSE results although half of all students taking the International GCSE in English Literature came away with an A or A* grade.

“Our students take international GCSEs which are a lot harder,” said Mr Fleck.

“I’m not worried about our GCSE results and I want to tell each child that they have done as well as they can. My aspirations are for students on an individual level rather than worrying about statistics.”

Reflecting on his first half term as headmaster at the school - which charges boarding fees of £26,265 a year - Mr Fleck said he was delighted with how everything had gone.

He said he was now looking forward to developing Sedbergh’s reputation beyong the north of England to establish it as one of the great British boarding schools in the country.