 In 2003, the school was awarded specialist status as a Sports College.In the main building there was a copy of the "Guernica" painting, which illustrated a stylised view of the 1937 Bombing of Guernica in Basque Spain by German and Italian bombers in the Spanish Civil War, in which the artist Pablo Picasso clearly expressed his abhorrence to the military suppression of the Spanish people.In 2003, Woodlands School adopted a new system where all the pupils took their SATs and GCSEs a year early compared to most other secondary schools in England.