Bolton School

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Bolton School

Mutare Vel Timere Sperno (Latin: "I scorn to change or to fear")
Established	ante 1516
School type	Independent
Headmaster (Boys' Division)	Mervyn E. W. Brooker
Headmistress (Girls' Division)	Gill Richards
Location	Bolton, Lancashire, England
Website	www.boltonschool.org

Bolton School is a public school (independent school) situated in the town of Bolton, Greater Manchester in the North-West of England.

The school comprises:

A nursery on Dobson Road (ages 0-5)
A co-educational infant school, called Beech House (ages 5-7)
A junior independent boys' school (ages 7-11), known as Park Road
A junior independent girls' school (ages 7-11)
Two separate secondary divisions, both with 6th form provision - Bolton School Boys' Division and Bolton School Girls' Division (ages 11-18).

Established as Bolton Grammar School, it is not known exactly when the Boys' School was founded, though it is recorded as being a 'going concern' as early as 1516. In 1899, the school moved from its site next to the Parish Church in Bolton to its current site on Chorley New Road. In 1913, it was re-endowed by Viscount Leverhulme. The current buildings were begun in the 1920s though they were not completed until the late 1960s.

The Girls' School was established in 1877 as Bolton Girls' Day School and was quickly renamed to Bolton High School for Girls. In 1913 it amalgamated with Bolton Grammar School and the Bolton School Foundation was formed.

The Boys' Division came in the top 20 nationwide in GCSE examinations in 2004. It has won national titles in water polo, football and chess. In 2006 A level examinations, the Boys' Division secured a position at 110th nationwide in the Daily Telegraph league table.

The Girls' Division was ranked the 155th best school in the country for A levels in 2006 by the Daily Telegraph.

Bolton School owns its own private coach company, B.S.S. Coaches, which has routes spreading from Lancaster to Buxton.

The Headmaster of the Boys' Division is Mr. M. E. W. Brooker, in post since 2003, and the Headmistress of the Girls' Division is Mrs. G. Richards, in post since 2005.

The motto of the school (used only by the Boys' Division) is Mutare Vel Timere Sperno, meaning "I scorn to change or to fear".

Both divisions of the school were featured in the 2006 edition of the Good Schools Guide.

The Boys' Division and Girls' Division Senior Schools (11-18 year olds) have over 800 students each. The Junior Boys' and Junior Girls' schools (ages 7-11) have about 200 pupils each.

1 Extracurricular activities
2 Notable Old Boltonians
3 External links
4 Reference

[edit] Extracurricular activities

The school has a varied extracurricular programme, ranging from the subject-related clubs, such as Art Club and The History Society, to wider-ranging clubs, such as Film Society and Gameshow Club. Many of these are run by the staff with the help of sixth-formers, but some have been created by the sixth-formers themselves. The lunch break is also used for sports training, along with sports-related clubs.

Bolton School maintains a large, full-time outdoor pursuits department, called Bolton School Outdoor Pursuits (BSOP). The school operates Patterdale Hall, a large residential outdoor pursuits centre in the Lake District.

Over 450 boys have an individual music lesson. Many ensembles are operated jointly with the Girls' Division. The Joint Chamber Choir has performed live on BBC Radio 4. The Senior Guitar Group has also won the Kirklees National Youth Guitar Orchestra Competition in recent years.

The Bolton School Paper is a quarterly-released newspaper, founded in 2002 and printed on tabloid newsprint. As of 2006, its circulation was 1,000. It is distributed free of charge to Bolton School students, staff, visitors and alumni. It is written solely by the students of the school - with students from Year 7 through to Year 13 taking a role in production, whether writing content, editing it or finalising the data. The newspaper also takes part in the TES Newsday competition annually. In 2006 it was Highly Commended.

Students contribute to the staff-edited Boltonian magazine, which is published annually.

In the past few years, the Boys' Division has run a "Mechatronics" club, which has given boys an opportunity to help create remote controlled vehicles for several national competitions, including Technogames and Rex Garrod's Robot Challenge. This society built the "LoonyCycle", a robotic unicycle (actually a monowheel), which won the award for "Most original concept" at the BBC-televised Technogames in 2002, the boys who originally created these machines have now moved onto University.

For the past eight years, the school has been building a concrete yacht as a millennium project ("The Third Millennium Ketch"). The boat is being constructed in a temporary boat shed attached to the school. This is scheduled for launch in 2007, and will be owned by the school and used for outdoor pursuits.

The boat was originally intended to be finished in the year 2000 and was called "The Millennium Yacht". However, due to the scale of the project, the ketch wasn't finished in 2000 and the project is still running, with continuing effort from boys of all ages.

[edit] Notable Old Boltonians

Sir Arthur Rostron (1869–1940), Captain of the RMS Carpathia, first ship to aid the RMS Titanic
Leslie Halliwell (1929–1989), film writer and historian
Sir Harry Kroto (born 1939), chemist
Sir Ian McKellen (born 1939), actor
Sir Geoffrey Jackson (1940–1988), British Ambassador to Uruguay, kidnapped by Tupamaros guerrillas and held prisoner for 8 months
Dame Janet Smith (born 1940), judge
Ann Taylor, Baroness Taylor of Bolton (born 1947), politician
Patricia Morris, Baroness Morris of Bolton (born 1953), politician
Mark Radcliffe (born 1958), radio broadcaster
David Ruffley (born 1962), politician
Nigel Short (born 1965), chess player
Monica Ali (born 1967), author
Roger Draper (born 1970), Chief Executive of the Lawn Tennis Association and formerly Chief Executive of Sport England
Archis Tiku (born 1977), bassist with the band Maxïmo Park
Caroline Plumb (born 1978), businesswoman
Ralf Little (born 1981), actor