Sidney Stringer School

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Sidney Stringer School & Community Technical College is a mixed-sex community college for pupils aged 11 – 18 in Hillfields, Coventry.^[1] Along with Barr's Hill School and Community College and the President Kennedy School and Community College it forms the North West Federation of Schools, which are allowed to provide the International General Certificate of Secondary Education English course to pupils at the school.^[2]

The school's head teacher is Brian Worrall. As of 2001 it had 955 pupils, nearly 75% of which were from ethnic minority backgrounds, mainly Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi, for nearly all of whom English was their second language. (The main first languages are Urdu, Gujerati, Bengali, and Panjabi.) Thirty four pupils were refugees. It has a below-average attandance rate, in part due to the religious holidays celebrated by the ethnic minority communities that fall during term time, an issue for the school on which it does not have the full cooperation of parents. (The school does not fulfil its legal obligations with respect to collective worship). Its best subjects at GCSE level are ICT (the school's strongest subject), art and design, and drama. Standards of pupil achievement at year 9 are well below the national average in English, the sciences, and mathematics.

The school liaises with its feeder primary schools, with year 5 and 6 pupils from those schools attending Sidney Stringer to experience "taster" lessons. Other primary pupils make use of the school's ICT facilities, and teachers from Sidney Stringer run physical education clubs at the primary schools during lunchtimes.^[1]

The school is also the location for various evening courses run by the Coventry Adult Education Service.^[3]

The school holds displays to raise awareness of World Refugee Day^[4] and in 2006 participated in the Motiv8 project.^[5]

In 2006, controversial plans to merge Sidney Stringer School with Barr's Hill School to form a city academy were dropped.^[6]

In June 2004, to commemorate world A.I.D.S day the whole school was painted red.

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b Tom Comer (2001-02-15). Sidney Stringer School (PDF). Ofsted.
^ The Coventry City Council and the North West Federation of Schools (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) Order 2005. Office of Public Sector Information (2005).
^ Black History Courses starting January 2005. Local History Magazine. Local History Press Ltd.
^ Overview of Activities: International Refugee Day 2006. UNITED for Intercultural Action.
^ Motiv8. Groundwork (June 2006).
^ Lucy Lynch. "City drops plan to merge two schools", icCoventry, Midland Newspapers Limited, 2006-02-28.

[edit] Further reading

Estelle Morris. "Gifted and talented: A day for smug satisfaction", The Guardian, 2006-03-28. — Morris, who used to teach at Sidney Stringer School, reports her experience of attending a school prize-giving ceremony, describing the school as "Like many inner-city schools, it's got the challenging part of the market: 44% on free school meals; more than 40 languages spoken. But, also like many inner-city schools, it has vision and ambition, and its kids have talent and character screaming to be recognised."